On Traci Sat. 10/20/07

Morning everyone It's a chilly 49 degrees this morning in Missouri - how's the weather where you are? I've had my morning protein shake and early round of vitamins. I'm off to the grocery store today, while my hubby and kiddos work on cleaning house. Depending on my energy level, I'll come home and join them. I can't wait to get that iron infusion this next week. So far, no chest pains today - but I had them off and on all day yesterday. So not sure what's up with that. A little worrisome. How did everyone else do this week? Did you stay on track with your eating, exercise and supplements? Do you do better or worse on the weekends with staying on track? Have a great one. Traci

Traci, In your investigations of your low iron, did you find information about iron deficiency causing chest pains and are your doctors looking at that? I know that was one of the symptoms listed during my research. I never experienced them but had just about every other symptom. My ferritin level is/was a 2. We discovered this in June and fought with insurance until this past week to get my iron infusions approved. I had my first infusion on Wednesday and am already feeling a difference. The energy is coming in burst right now but I've got more energy than I have in months. I actually woke up on Thursday and wasn't wanting to go back to sleep immediately.

Your ferritin was a 2 ?!!!!!! Wowzers!! How was your hemoglobin, hemitocrit, iron binding, iron saturation and all that? I'm glad the infusions have helped you. Will you have to go every so often to have those, or are you going to try to see if you can use pills now to maintain that? Yes, I have read that low iron can cause chest pains, but am not sure if it would cause the enzyme in my blood that is indicative of heart attack or heart damage - such as I had on Thursday when I went to the ER. Maybe it can? I'm not sure. I have awesome insurance, and they have paid for everything - never questioned a thing. So I'm not worried about the iron infusions - I'm just waiting for the doc to calculate how much I need and to get the orders done and for me to get it scheduled with outpatient at the hospital. I'm glad you're feeling better Jennifer.

Hi Traci and everyone - Traci - I'm glad you're feeling better. When I was having heart palpitations and heart pain with the smallest exertion, the findings were very low iron. Since I've been taking iron supplements, I'm much, much better. Let's hope your problems turns out to be something as simple..... I'm doing well on my 5DPT. Done with Day 5! I started off at 186.8 and this morning I was 177.4!!! And best of all, my body feels better, I'm not eating all day long with the carbs and the sweets. I'm sleeping better too. That's not to say that I don't still crave a pretzel or cracker; I do, but I know I can handle it and it won't last forever. I'm proud of myself and I'm glad I took another chance at changing my eating habits. Very busy day today, going to take a rest then head up to visit my aunt.... Hugs, Nancy

My hematologist wants me to have the infusions until we get my iron stores built back up. Then we will monitor my levels. At that point I will probably try the oral iron again but it causes such severe cramping in me that it may not be an option. My bypass surgeon says that I am probably not absorbing much of the oral iron anyway and will probably need an occasional infusion to keep my levels up. He said it's not really as bad as it sounds since I have such a bad reaction to the oral supplements. Here's my lab results from June: RBC 3.93 WBC 4.2 Hemoglobin 10.1 hemacrit 31 iron 34 TIBC 576 which was high % iron saturation 6% SGPT/ALT 27 Not sure what that one is B12 292 (even though technically normal, my surgeon recommends even more supplements when it gets below 400, he says he's seen too much damage while it's still in the "normal" range) My vitamin D was 94 which was high. My surgeon said it's indicative of me not having enough calcium. I had a baby in January, and we feel that he depleted what iron stores I had. Until we get my iron back up, we can't even consider this. I also have to exploratory surgery for what my surgeon thinks is an intermittent internal hernia. I will return to NJ to have Dr. Abkin fix that. Good luck with your infusion. Are they giving you Infed or Ferrlecit?

Here's my basic labs from early October 2007: WBC 4.3 low RBC 4.6 hemoglobin 13.2 hematocrit 39.0 iron, total 98 TIBC 592.0 high % iron saturation 17 low ferritin 9 B12 - 789 Your levels are really, really low on the iron. Your B12 is definitely too low. For us, ideally, we should strive for B12 levels of 1000 or greater, which is ABOVE lab range normals. We don't absorb any B12 from food at all, and it can deplete extremely quickly what we do take in from sublinguals or injections. My B12 of 789 is down from over 900 six months ago; so I'm switching to 2 shots per month. It's difficult for us as post-ops to go by lab range normals on many things, because we're not longer "normal". Also, we need to go by how we feel. Then we have to take into consideration the often very wide "normal" range for the labs. I know for my lab - a normal ferritin range is 3 - 105. That's a huge range!! Yet most hematologists say normal is 50-60, with optimal at 80 and they will infuse anything below 50. So my level of 9 is awful and yours at what, 3? is even worse, yet still considered within lab range "normal". BUT, our TIBC shows that something is going on - even in my case where my other iron counts are normal (hemoglobin and hematocrit). So it's best to stay on top of it before it gets too bad, to keep yourself feeling your best. I have no clue what they're going to use on me yet for the infusion. They haven't gotten the orders written and let me know it's ready for me to call the outpatient department to get it all scheduled yet. I'm hoping I can get this all done this next week. I also had the intermittent internal hernia about 1 year post-op. A very painful thing, and had surgery to repair that. Glad I did. Another very common thing with us post-ops, something to do with how the surgery is done and some loop created where intestines can slip through, or something like that. I'll let you know when I get more info on my infusion. Let us know about your hernia surgery.