Another little health update from me post-haemotology appointment

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Another little health update from me post-haemotology appointment:

It’s taken me a bit of time to process everything, and the brain fog from whatever is going on is NOT fun and, as you can imagine, bloody frustrating for an academic/writer who relies on her brain.

Anyway, yesterday I had my haematology appointment, and the consensus is that they don’t officially know what’s wrong yet, but there are some suspicions. They are testing me for myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs for short) because of my prolonged high CRP, leukocytosis, and thrombocytosis. MPNs are like blood cancers/blood disorders – the WHO classifies them as a blood cancer, but they are treated like an autoimmune/chronic condition, as chemo can increase the chance of other cancers occurring. Essentially, an MPN occurs when the bone marrow in the body produces an excessive number of mature red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. The test takes 4-5 weeks to come back. They have ruled out most autoimmune conditions & things like thyroid dysfunction and diabetes.

The haemotologist was a bit blasé about it all (as specialists often are), but he suspects that I have something known as “essential thrombocytosis” or ET for short (even if the test comes back negative, they treat it as ET). What this means is that my bone marrow produces too many platelets, and the way they help this is with blood-thinning medication (aka aspirin) and just monitoring you over time to ensure you don’t have complications like blood clots or strokes, etc.

In all of this, I’m learning so many new big words and so many health conditions that I didn’t realise were possible. I think more awareness of these things should be a priority. I have managed to find some humour in it – the condition is ET, like the alien movie E.T.

I’m also realising that it’s important to live your life to the fullest, no matter what, and make sure that you do something every day that brings you joy. We don’t know why bad things happen to good people, but we can always find the good in people.

As for the suspected POTS/dysautonomia, the waiting period can be up to a year to see the specialist because of how common it is post-COVID, but I’m trying to manage my symptoms as best as I can without pushing myself. I was told to give them a call back in a few weeks if I don’t hear back by then. It’s very common in women with things like IBS, anxiety, and long COVID.

I wish I had more good news to share, and I hope maybe in 5 weeks that will be the case, but we also have to be realistic and learn about these things. Luke and I want to do more travelling, and we want to go back to Torquay as Benji’s never been there and it's super dog-friendly. We have a NZ trip at Christmas booked, as ya’ll know, and we want to go to Vancouver, Canada, next year to meet my pen pal, Tayler.

Anyway, that’s my health update for now. We’ll know more soon, but this is just a reminder to hold your loved ones close, tell everyone you love them, and do all that you want to do in life.

Much love,

Ash xx

PS you can read my previous health update "here" and if you'd like to follow my Substack where I write daily health update posts, check it out "here".