I recently had my annual physical for work and, like every year, my results came back abnormal on account of my Beta Thalassemia Minor. The trait or condition or whatever you want to call it, for those who aren’t aware, is an inherited genetic abnormality of the red blood cells, specifically of the hemoglobin protein chain. In my case, the Beta chain. That means that my Beta hemoglobin chains are missing/reduced, which results in shruken red blood cells, and therefore the decreased oxygen carrying capacity of my blood.
Since I only have one copy of the trait, this means that the condition is not fatal, or even really something that needs to be treated. Instead, it presents as a mild to moderate form of anemia. I have known this since I was a kid. As a result, my hemoglobin counts are always low. Too low to donate blood. But I am not iron deficient. (At least, not usually, I do occasionally swing that way, but that might be more due to my diet lacking red meat more than anything else. I’m probably not doing myself any favors there, but hey! I have low cholesterol!) And the trait is supposed to confer some resistance to malaria, so I tried to consider it a mostly good thing, even if it’s not really that good of a thing.
Despite knowing that the trait presents as anemia, and even my knowing that that anemia would occasionally show up in my life (I mean THE WHOLE REASON WHY they ever diagnosed me as a child was because I was hella symptomatic for anemia: heavily fatigued, cold, pale, etc. All of which prompted my mother to have the doctors run tests until they figured out what was wrong.) I never thought that any of the other ailments that I occasionally (or more than occasionally) suffer from could be from it as well. I mean, the doctors that I spoke with, and the medical texts I’d checked all said that it was ‘asymptomatic except for mild to moderate anemia,’ so why would I think any different?
For some reason, this time the day I got the results, I felt prompted to go look some stuff up, and I came across a forum for people with all the various forms of Thalassemia. Reading through those forums was a bit of an eye-opener, because there were all of these people that have the SAME issues that I have. Bouts of fatigue/lethargy (which yes you CAN have even while being an insomniac – it’s not fun), dizziness/lightheadedness, reduced/low/poor immune systems, feeling cold, etc. I was amazed, BECAUSE THOSE ALL DESCRIBE ME.
For the most part, those things aren’t life-altering, but some of them are problematic. The low immune system for instance, my family and everyone I work with/see on a regular basis have always questioned why/how I can be sick so often, all throughout the year. Especially considering that I live a mostly healthy lifestyle, and I have never been able to give an adequate answer. It's frustrating. The fatigue is another one that has caused problems in the past. Even when I had a boatload of bloodwork and a sleep study done a few years ago, I only thought SOME of my symptoms were from the Thal, I didn’t think ALL of them could be. And now it turns out that there have been clinical studies that show that, yup! That’s probably the cause of it all. (Not the insomnia or sleep paralysis, that’s thanks to my Pop, the Thal is thanks to my Ma.) That combined with the forums of people that have the same issues, with no other obvious common denominator, seems to be at least moderately conclusive.
It’s kind of a weird feeling, having this sudden diagnosis for a lot of my issues. And it makes me want to know MORE. Though the indicators are that there hasn’t been a lot of focused research on symptoms of the trait, so it might be hard for me to find more studies; doesn’t mean I’m not gonna look.
In the meantime, it seems like a good start to helping level myself out might be to start taking folic acid supplements. It might not help, but it won’t hurt.
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mysticalchild_isis (Even though I was too late to be able to guess any of the ones that she posted. Slow Sky is slow. *hangs head*)
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