More Anaemic Perspectives

For those of you who don't keep up to date reading my most boring blogs, a while back i blogged about being diagnosed (?) with anaemia.

In case you haven't got a clue what it is, today i was reading alot about it and a certain obsession i have with ice (the frozen water kind). Anyway, go and familiarise yourself with it at the link below.

WHAT IS ANAEMIA?

So anyway, the reason i was doing some more research into the diagnosis is because i've been told that anaemic people crave ice (the frozen water kind).

Here's me thinking i just had an unnatural obsession with ice (buying bags of ice at petrol stations and consuming it) when in fact, i have the pagophagia form of pica. In simple terms phagopagia being the obsession with ice and pica being the consumption of non-food substancecs.

Also in my online medical research (ha!), i came across a thing called 'Restless Legs Syndrome'.

In the first stages of my anaemia (it's settled down now and i'm hoping i'm not quite so anaemic), i was experiencing heart palpitations and, low and behold, restless legs syndrome. When i came across it i noticed that it was linked with anaemia.

I guess in summary, all these things apart from the heart palpitations, just went unnoticed. It's only now that i'm looking into anaemia in more depth that i'm noticing things i've experienced.

I was also interested to note in the anaemia information that it said, "Iron deficiency can also reduce attention span", although i think maybe my attention is just short in general hahaha....anaemia doesn't contribute to that.

I guess the most disturbing thing about my anaemia is that my doctor tested me for Leukemia without even telling me. The reason i know this is because it came up in my research.

Leaukemia is a blood disease and i thought to research it simply because anaemia is also a blood condition. The iron levels in your red blood cells aren't right. Now i know leukemia is because you produce an abnormal amount of white blood cells hence the word leukemia (meaning white blood cells), but i also know that it creates so many that your normal cells ie. white, red and platelets get crowded out and your body finds fighting infections difficult. It's complicated and that probably isn't right.

But what stood out to me in my research on Leukemia is that anaemia can be a symptom of leukemia. It also said that some symptoms are enlarged liver and spleen. Now is the disturbing part. My doctor laid me down on the surgery bed and poked and prodded my liver and spleen which she told me she would do. What i didn't know was that it was probably to feel if they were enlarged.

Thankfully i don't think i have leukemia because she didn't say i had it and my organs weren't enlarged i'm pretty sure! She also had my blood sent to a specialist to check the red blood cells as she detected and abnormality but i'm sure that if anything was wrong she would've called as she took down my mobile number! So far, no calls - touch wood!

So all in all i think i'm pretty safe but i guess it just goes to show what a little research on a particular subject can do, eh?!

Tink xoxo