Anemia/Hypokalemia questions!
I am currently 4 years post open and a. Now suffering from iron deficiency anemia. I was sent to the ER Friday by my GP to receive a blood transfusion. I called Dr.L my surgeon and he said to just have the iron iv, which I received. They said it will take about a week or so and a few treatments to get back to normal. I increased my iron consumption for 5 weeks along with a iron supplement only to have my numbers drop 10 pts. I hope this work because I am so tired! I hope we both get this figured out asap. Good luck.
Hi,
1) Yes I have had both - and got a low potassium induced cardiac arrest in the bargain. They are just now (I am 3 1/2_years out) starting to really get to the bottom of this. The pernicious anemia is related to a lack of intrinsic factor. And on top of that my body basically just decided it wasn't gonna make blood anymore sometime late last year. The treatments so far have been iron infusions, blood transfusions, massive doses of B12 and vitamin D. Next week we are going to start Epogyn (sp?) injections. I'm not quite sure what that is (I know, I need to research but I am just so damn tired I can hardly sit up for an hour at a time right now), but it appears to be some kind of hormone that is supposed to jump start your iron and/or red blood cell production. Sorry, you should probably google it. So you are not alone.
(I don't have a blind stomach - my RnY was kind of mutated, so you would think they would have been watching this whole intrinsic factor production from the beginning since it is produced by your stomach lining but no.)
2) Pump is right. You'll get a lot more info on the DS forum, so you really do want to cross post, even though you are an RnY.
Best of luck to you. Wish I could help somehow. For the record, I too do not regret having the surgery one bit.=)
About a year and a half ago I had anemia problems. I ended up in the hospital twice and had several blood transfusions and iron infusions from Nov. 10 to April 11. I had a lot a test also. They knew I was loosing blood through my stool but couldn't find the the bleed through the test that I had. So the last time I wend to the hospital, my Doctor decided to do exploritory surgery and found an interal herina. Since he fixed that I have had no problems. Best of luck to you and I hope you feel better soon.