Many people have asked me how I knew there was something wrong, or how hemochromatosis became an issue in my life. I really haven’t said much; well, at least not in writing.
So to recall…as far as I can tell… everything started getting funky around July. I was really tired all the time. I am not a tired person…I’m a can’t sit still person. I was, barely, keeping up with my regular activities. Right after lunch I’d feel queasy and dizzy and hot flashy…but only just a little…enough to be worrisome and annoying.
I always have had to work on my weight. (In my early twenties I nicknamed myself “chunky monkey”, which was stupidly cruel… but the early twenties are kind of a dumb time for a lot of people, so I can forgive me now.) This summer was the first time I could ever remember that I could eat with impunity, and I was losing weight. You know at first, that was okie-dokie-smokey! (Hey, food rocks!) You can eat to live or live to eat. I am in the latter camp. I found that even with the queasies the dizziness and the flashes I also had the hungries…I mean the hunger was well…constant. To give it more thought though..this can be kind of a scary sign and by September the “c” word started to frequent my grey matter.
By mid-October, other weird things were happening…my abdomen was in constant pain, I was achey all over, and I could not stay awake. I would average 12-14 hours of sleep per day and still get up exhausted. In November, things went downhill fairly quickly and by mid-month I was unable to function in my everyday tasks or my job(s). By the 18th my mother came to visit and noticed my weird ashen skin color.
Finally I had no libido. What the heck! I’m supposed to be at my peak! I am supposed to be horn-dog -city at my age. What a rip-off!
If you check out the web info sites about iron overload diseases you will find that my symptoms match hemochromatois quite handily: fatigue,
exhaustion, abdominal pain, loss of sex drive,
grey/pale skin, joint pain, and even depression.
Unfortunately, they mimic a plethora of other diseases too…hence my doctors’ diagnostic disagreement. In the end, it was my numbers that made me believe that my general practitioner was barking up the right tree…that is my blood test numbers that indicated that I had too much iron in my system. The pattern is too coincidental-high iron numbers and I feel sick. Normal range iron numbers and I don’t feel sick. This is the way hemo is supposed to behave.
So we’ll see.
Potentially a fatal iron storage disease with excessive iron deposits especially in the liver.This killer is an autosomal recessive disorder that is passed to a child from the parents. Probably the greatest difficulty in early diagnosis is that it is non-specific and symptoms are vague.
Even though hemochromatosis is common, the disease is often underdiagnosed. The key to preventing this disease is early detection and treatment. Most symptoms don’t develop until after thirty for men, and after fifty for women. Sometimes referred to as ‘bronze diabetes’, it is also commonly known as iron overload disease.