Very Anemic
Today I went in for my 11th round of Velban. I had my labs drawn, went to Stanford shopping mall to kill some time, then went back to see my doctor and get my treatment.
It turns out that my hematocrit and hemoglobin are very low and I will need two units of blood tomorrow. My nurse practioner was actually very surprised that I have been able to get out of bed, let alone function normally. With this low of a count I shouldn't have even been out driving. It definitely explains why I've been feeling so lousy and tired the past few weeks and haven't been able to do much walking/training. The main concern now is why I'm so anemic considering I've been getting weekly shots of Procrit to prevent this. Either I'm somehow losing large quatities of blood, my body is not producing sufficient blood, or something is causing it to deplete more than normal. I had several blood tests run this evening to try to help determine what could be causing this. I also had to go through an extensive cross-match typing since this will be the first time I receive a tranfussion since my donor transplant. The last time I was cross-matched I still had O+ blood (which I was born with), however my donor is A+ so we're assuming I have now converted. Tomorrow I will know for sure. I'm scheduled to be at Stanford tomorrow morning and it will take approximately 3-5 hours to get two units of blood...a long boring day it will be. I definitely have to have this taken care of before our trip to Mexico though cause it would be too risky to go there this deficient, especially considering the high elevation there.
Another issue with my blood today was that my potassium was well below normal. I have been taking postassium and magnessium supplements on a daily basis, but they believe with all the diahrrea I've been having from the laxatives I take my body is not absorbing any of the nutrients/supplements. This could actually also be attributing to the anemia since my body is not properly absorbing iron and iron is necessary for Procrit to work.
So just when I was starting to feel better and we planned a trip things start to go bad again. I just hope they can find a simple solution to the reason my red count has been dropping so much.
As far as my knees/body is concerned...I've pretty much stopped walking for now. I'm still continuing with physical therapy, the chiropractor, and massage therapy every week. I'm also taking a core strenghthening class twice a week to try and help. I haven't really seen any positive results from all of this so I'm getting very discouraged. Anytime I go down a flight of stairs or even a slight downhill I'm in extreme pain. Regardless whether I can continue training, I told Chris he needs to do the Nike 1/2 marathon so that I can have the finisher's Nike shirt and Tiffany medal!
It turns out that my hematocrit and hemoglobin are very low and I will need two units of blood tomorrow. My nurse practioner was actually very surprised that I have been able to get out of bed, let alone function normally. With this low of a count I shouldn't have even been out driving. It definitely explains why I've been feeling so lousy and tired the past few weeks and haven't been able to do much walking/training. The main concern now is why I'm so anemic considering I've been getting weekly shots of Procrit to prevent this. Either I'm somehow losing large quatities of blood, my body is not producing sufficient blood, or something is causing it to deplete more than normal. I had several blood tests run this evening to try to help determine what could be causing this. I also had to go through an extensive cross-match typing since this will be the first time I receive a tranfussion since my donor transplant. The last time I was cross-matched I still had O+ blood (which I was born with), however my donor is A+ so we're assuming I have now converted. Tomorrow I will know for sure. I'm scheduled to be at Stanford tomorrow morning and it will take approximately 3-5 hours to get two units of blood...a long boring day it will be. I definitely have to have this taken care of before our trip to Mexico though cause it would be too risky to go there this deficient, especially considering the high elevation there.
Another issue with my blood today was that my potassium was well below normal. I have been taking postassium and magnessium supplements on a daily basis, but they believe with all the diahrrea I've been having from the laxatives I take my body is not absorbing any of the nutrients/supplements. This could actually also be attributing to the anemia since my body is not properly absorbing iron and iron is necessary for Procrit to work.
So just when I was starting to feel better and we planned a trip things start to go bad again. I just hope they can find a simple solution to the reason my red count has been dropping so much.
As far as my knees/body is concerned...I've pretty much stopped walking for now. I'm still continuing with physical therapy, the chiropractor, and massage therapy every week. I'm also taking a core strenghthening class twice a week to try and help. I haven't really seen any positive results from all of this so I'm getting very discouraged. Anytime I go down a flight of stairs or even a slight downhill I'm in extreme pain. Regardless whether I can continue training, I told Chris he needs to do the Nike 1/2 marathon so that I can have the finisher's Nike shirt and Tiffany medal!
posted by Erika @ 10:14 PM
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