You may already know that it’s important to wash your hands, wear a face mask and avoid sick people while neutropenic.
But is there anything else you should — or should not — be doing to avoid infections when you’re immunocompromised by a low white blood cell count during or after cancer treatment?
We spoke with internal medicine expert Carmen Escalante, M.D., for insight. Here are five precautions she shares with immunocompromised...

Until she came to MD Anderson, 82-year-old Myrna Youmans had never heard the words “smoldering myeloma.” So, she didn’t know that they described...
My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 94. My mother-in-law had it when she was in her 40s. But to my knowledge, there’s...
By the time I got to MD Anderson in March 2021, I’d already been through two cancer diagnoses, three relapses, six types of chemotherapy and two stem cell transplants. I was only 21.
But I’d exhausted all the treatment options near my home in Lithuania. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to watch my sisters’ children grow up, see the world or care about some of the same things my peers did.
Then, I heard about a targeted therapy...

As a senior medical laboratory scientist at MD Anderson, I work behind the scenes to analyze patients’ lab work. My findings play a crucial...
Carolyn Drone thought her days of coping with cancer were over. She’d finished leukemia treatment two years earlier and showed no signs of...
Since they were first introduced more than 60 years ago, stem cell transplants have cured or extended the lives of millions diagnosed with...
I had symptoms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the spring of 2008, though I didn’t recognize them at the time. The first was a severe headache,...
I’d never heard of myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) before I was diagnosed with it in November 2019. So, I didn’t know it was a bone marrow...
I’m a statistics guy, so when my doctor explained that a stem cell transplant offered me the greatest odds for surviving acute myeloid leukemia...