Hello Dtimor and thanks for your post

I am one of the enquiry nurses and have been asked by our moderators to read your post.

I was sorry to learn about your mum. Chemotherapy is designed to attack the cells in the body, and this means that the blood cells being made in the bone marrow are affected as well. So patients end up with low blood counts, and this is expected and normal. In most cases it can be the white cell count (WCC) that is affected and if this drops too low, it does increase the risk of infection. With platelets it affects the clotting of the blood, so doctors will sometimes have to delay chemotherapy if the platelet count is too low. The blood counts generally improves within a week or so. You can read more about how chemotherapy affects the bone marrow by clicking here.

As the chemotherapy has caused low platelets, it tends to regenerate on its own, so it’s not really necessary for your mum to change or alter her diet in any way. There are no natural remedies that she can take that will increase her platelet count. If someone continued to have very low platelet counts then doctors would consider giving a platelet transfusion. But this is only usually given in patients who have very high dose chemotherapy, for example bone marrow transplant patients.

I hope this helps. If you would like to talk this through with one of the nurses directly, you can telephone us on 0808 800 4040.  We are here from Monday to Friday, 9am-5pm.

Kind Regards,
Celene