What Lab work does your doctor require?

On the subject of Labs.......

I am self pay on my scripts and blood work.

I went into Quest with my one year Blood Work Order from my surgeon......... The lady said... take a seat this is gonna take a while to figure out.

With Dr. Cirangle's orders and a couple from my cardio doc......... Over $2300 !!!!! Cash discount to $1600

So I remembered one of my "friend's" here on OH worked for an Online Lab Service called "Direct Labs" www.directlabs.com

OH member "goodlife" works for Direct Labs. I contacted her and got a quote......

With our OH discount..... It was significantly less than a thousand (not gonna give the exact number cause all doctors lap panels can be different)

Direct Labs goes through Lab Corp...... You order and pay for your labs from Direct Labs at a huge discount and get your blood drawn at any nationwide LabCorp office...... than your results are posted to your private online account at directlabs.com and or to your Doctor.

Pretty awesome service !!!! and member "goodlife" is pretty awesome also !!!!

If your self pay...... This has got to be the way to go !!!

frisco

Or like me!  I right now, cuz of what I was low in, would be best served getting year and a half labs, my insurance didnt pay for my surgery, and I dont want to raise flags about stuff, since they only cover full set of labs once a year!

Oh my goodness Frisco!  I am so grateful to have insurance.  Thanks for reminding me!  And, thanks for the info for those out there without insurance!  Great info!

Being self employed, and never joined up with any associations/groups.....

I have only carried "Major Hospital and Surgical" insurance. (just covered for the big to bad)

It is a pain to pay for doctor appointments, drugs and labs..... but I think in the long haul I'm still ahead compared to if I was paying for a full coverage policy every month.

frisco

Yeah, you really need to do the anemia panel and not just iron levels.  Take my last year and a half labs...My iron levels have been just fine, but my ferritin levels have been steadily sinking.  Because I was doing the anemia panel I was able to see the trend and do something about it before I got in real trouble.  Had I only been doing iron, it would still be showing on the low end of normal.

mary

Can someone explain all of this to me?  I just had labs done and I am anemic but I am not sure
what ferritin levels are compared to iron level?

Ok, give me a sec and I'll explain it...

mary

So, there are three main components to watch in the anemia profile...

Ferritin - is your body's 'bank' of iron stores
Iron Serum - is the amount of iron circulating in your blood
Transferrin - kind of requests the amount of iron in your blood to be increased or decreased

these are the values for my last three blood draws:

Ferritin -            41     37.7     18
Iron Serum - 103     90     69
Transferrin - 473   481     491

You can see from the trends that my 'banks' have been steadily going down, as well as my iron serum level and my transferrin is increasingly trying to get more iron released into my blood.

You can have iron deficiancy with or without anemia.  You are iron deficient when your ferritin drops below 12 or so.  You can be diagnosed with anemia by several factors, including a low iron serum and hemoglobin.

The thing about my values, if you look at any of them seperately, they look a little low, but still within normal.  If you look at a series of results, you can see the trend and hopefully catch problems before they get out of hand.

Girlie.. The hemaplex, does that/is that helping with your ferritin?  Mine was 10 at my yearly test (booo). 

Yes the hemaplex has help tremendously.  My ferritin went up 30 pts in about 6 weeks just by taking the one supplement.  It is not the heme iron that everyone likes around here, but it does contain vit C and a host of b vitamins that help with absorption.  It has worked well for me.

mary