What symptoms do patients experience that may indicate the need to start treatment?

I think that's one of the toughest things about CLL is that, you know, a lot of the symptoms that I brought up—fevers, drenching sweats, weight loss, fatigue—could be due to this, you know, or something else.

So I tell patients to take kind of the worry from themselves off of it and just report those symptoms when they come up. And then it's kind of on our medical team to decide, is this due to the CLL or not? But those are really, really the main things. 

I would say fatigue is usually a prominent one, especially if the blood counts are changing. But then there actually are patients that don't really have these symptoms either. 

And so it's really one of the things with CLL, you know, getting to know your doctor. And a lot of times we'll, you know, very closely observe a symptom over, you know, a short period of time depending on the situation in order to determine whether it's due to the CLL or not.

And one thing I'll tell patients because I think it could be, you know, can be anxiety-provoking to think, "Oh, do I have to look out for these symptoms?" Usually if there's a symptom, the CLL doesn't go away. And so it's really, you know, they're present. And so let your doctor know, and then your doctor and the team will further guide you about, you know, what further workup needs to be done and how you kind of monitor that symptom.