Hmmm..

It almost feels wrong to be posting about my state of health at a time of such devastation in Christchurch. My grumbling aches and pains are nothing compared to pain felt by those who have lived through such a terrifying experience or who have been injured or lost loved ones.
My heart goes out to them.

I did however receive a phone call last night from my #2 GP, Kyra Jones. She fills in for my usual GP, Dr Stu, on the days he has off. Kyra is very thorough and seems to enjoy her work. She usually phones in the evening following a visit and updates me with test results and her thoughts on what may be ailing me.
Last night she called to say that my blood tests had shown that almost everything was normal (relative to me) except my haemoglobin count which was well down at 95, when normal range is 135-170.

This would explain the lack of energy and fatigue. There is just not enough oxygen getting into my blood. It also explain the tachycardia (rapid heart rate). However I've never looked at the haemoglobin levels in my previous blood tests so I don't know if this a new thing brought on by the new Azathioprine drug which is myelosuppressive (damaging to bone marrow) or it's a result of a steady decline in the overall state of my already fragile bone marrow.

I've always know my bone marrow is shot (read F&#ked), it never recovered after my first lick of chemo back in 2005. Add to that dozens of sessions of ABVD chemo, the salvage chemo, the conditioning chemo before the stem cell transplant, the high dose chemo for the STC and you can see why my platelets never get much above 50 (normal 150-400) these days. However if the low haemoglobin count is because of Hodgkin's lymphoma infiltration. There's nothing we can do to fix that.

So fingers crossed that the fatigue is just a fact of life, that the low blood count is a new thing and can be fixed with regular transfusions and or drugs until I'm off the immunosuppressive medication in a year or so. I've emailed Kyra asking her to review the last few blood tests and get back to me.