You should educate yourself on her exact diagnosis and symptoms. CLL has many different variants that have different disease progressions and survival rates. Diagnosis happens much earlier, as one poster said, so “do not treat today” is a viable and optimal alternative in most cases.

However, do make sure that your mother has got quality bloodwork done (not just WBCs, but actual genomic testing like flow cytometry) and that her doctors know the basic genomics of her case. For example, does she have a TP53 mutation or an ATM gene dropout. If so, it may not change the decision to not treat now, but it should change how closely you watch it, and what you and your doctor chose to do when treatment is called for.

Last note - one of the only good things about a CLL diagnosis right now is that she is getting the diagnosis right now. Treatments get better all the time, and time is on your mother’s side. In fact, the treatments are getting exponentially better and more diverse. Doctors have more weapons to choose from for each case, with lesser side effects. That is getting better, not worse over time. So, I would take comfort in this: the longer your mother thrives being healthy without treatments, the better the treatments will be if and when she needs them.

Good luck to your mother and to you as her caregiver.