Anemia with normal iron

My endocrinologist, who is aware of my DS (but I don't think has much knowledge/experience with it), saw me recently. I'd done blood work for him (I haven't done any blood work yet for my bariatric doctor; I will do it in about two weeks and see him shortly after that). Anyway, I am severely anemic. To the point that my endocrinologist is extremely concerned. But my iron levels are within normal range. Normally if you're anemic, you take more iron and it fixes it. But I'm getting plenty of iron.

Has anyone else dealt with this as it relates to the surgery? My endocrinologist is now wondering if I have some kind of chronic infection, kidney failure or cancer because he doesn't know how else to explain the anemia.

I went through this. My iron levels went sky high so I had to stop taking iron but the good / high iron levels had no affect on my hemoglobin / hematocrit numbers which were chronically in the low range but not dangerously low.

The endocrinologist came up with chronic anemia due to unspecified inflammation. I had no markers for any of the major issues listed above. Usually, the treatment is to figure out what is causing the inflammation and treat that which fixes the anemia as a side benefit. Since they couldn't locate the source of my inflammation and while low my numbers were stable we just decided to watch to make sure they didn't go any lower but to discontinue the oral iron completely.

I was diabetic for a number of years before he surgery, took some damage to my kidneys but nothing too serious. Could be a lot of things combining in my 60 year old body. I don't have any of the symptoms they ascribe to severe anemia so I just exercise and keep an eye on my numbers.

Hopefully they can find something to help you. I'm not sure what the treatment would have been if my bloodwork was worse than it is. I can't really say this is directly related to the DS, more like there was so much else going on before it maybe flew under the radar? At least the endocrinologist also thought there was no direct correlation. This happened several years after surgery. She said that if it was closer to surgery they might look for a small bleed but if that was the case it would have healed by the time I saw her and again no indications that it was actually happening.

Did they also check your ferritin number? I've had it where my serum iron was normal but my ferritin was low (according to my hematologist anything ferritin number under 100 is anemic), which then required infusions.

Do you have all the classic symptoms of iron deficiency anemia?

Copper deficiency can cause anemia unrelated to your iron levels. Some DS patients need to supplement copper, some don't. I can't explain why. This can pop up surprisingly soon after your DS. If you haven't already, get your copper level checked.

Larra