Blood Levels?

At my 3 mos appointment most of my blood work was missing. Somehow the lab screwed up and didn't do most of the tests. I had to have them done again and insisted they send me a copy. I just received it today and haven't heard from my Dr yet.

Most levels seem right in the middle of normal range but my RDW is labeled as high at 17.2 and my iron is on the low end at 46. I'll call the office tomorrow but I was wondering if any of you had the ability to interpret this for me?

my RDW usually tests high as well.  It stands for Red Cell Distribution Width.  If it's high, it means there's a lot of variation in the size of your red blood cells. It could mean a lot of things - for example, anemia (either iron or B12), hemorrhaging, or inflammation.  They have to look at it in conjunction with other blood values to figure out what exactly it is.  That being said, they never seemed to be particularly concerned with mine, but then, it's not all that high (15.5% last time).   You can google it - I did find one time some chart or table that told you what it most likely was based on what your other blood values are.  In my case, it seemed to indicate inflammation.  I said something to the PA in my surgeon's office, and he said "that could be" and just sort of shrugged the whole thing off.  Evidently he didn't think it was abnormal enough to worry about.

I'm not sure if this is the document I mentioned (it was probably a year ago when I looked into this), but this does explain some of it:

http://www.newhealthguide.org/RDW-High.html

Thank you! I'll take a look at it with my results.