Medical question

**Sigurd** · 06-16-2008, 10:37

Originally Posted by KukriKhan

And yes, I admit it: I'm a great one to talk such talk, Mister Procrastination on his Yearly Check-up that's TWO years Overdue.

The yearly check-ups are indeed important. Just to show you guys how important it is; I’ll tell you my experience.

I have a slight touch of psoriatic arthritis and asthma and need to get my yearly check-up to see if it is evolving and get my prescriptions renewed. Last year I had my normal talk with my doctor and we agreed that everything was status quo. As an afterthought he ordered some blood-samples just to have them on file for future reference. I had not taken any the year before. After a few days I was called back to his office, and he was a little concerned that many of the values were quite high. I had high values of blood cells, iron etc. It could just be my body compensating for my touch of asthma but I had the values for elite athletes or athletes doing serious height training. Well, I do some exercise but not to the extent the tests showed. I was slightly pleased and thought: yeah… eating healthy and taking no additional substances (other than asthma medicine upon need) relating to training is really better.

A second set of blood samples were taken and sent away to compare with the first. They too were abnormally high. I was sent to a hospital for further checks and all sorts of tests. The assistant doctor, a sweet young woman was the supervisor of the tests and she too suspected it was just my body compensating for a problem with inhaling enough oxygen, height training at sea level so to speak. But she always talked about a secondary cause and a primary cause, where the secondary cause was my asthma, and a primary cause that was serious but she didn’t define it. I took a JAK mutation test and it came back positive. It was the primary cause. I had polycytemia vera, which is a stage in a range of stages that might eventually end in leukemia.

This stage is serious if not treated. Life expectancy is around a year if not treated. The treatment is rather simple, a single blood thinning pill every day and a blood sample every month to check if I need to get rid of a pint of blood. At first I went nearly every week giving a pint of blood to reach the ideal levels. Luckily I don’t need chemotherapy, yet…

Seeing your doctor and taking those annual tests is important, even though you feel normal.