Therapeutic Phlebotomy...What the heck?
 

Well,

I've just had my third phlebotomy in six weeks...the result?

My ferretin levels have jumped 300 points! :mad::mad::confused::mad

What is going on? I haven't had a transfusion in almost a year.

Am I eating iron filings in my sleep?

Help!

Ferritin is considered an acute-phase reactant which means just about anything can make it spike. Simple things like them not handling the blood draw properly, shaking the tube or leaving the tourniquet on too long. Any infection or inflammation will cause it to go up also. Any injury will have an impact.

It is more common to see these bigger spikes when the FE is over 1000.

Another thing to considered is that as you remove iron from the blood, your system will start pulling the excess iron out of the organs where it was also stored (unsafely) since it now has more capacity to store it safely with the ferritin protein. Hence, the FE count doesn't reduce as quickly as we'd like.

One last possibility.....you could have hemochromatosis in addition and it's just now starting to show up. But I would wait to worry about this one until you get your FE down to a normal range. When you do and then your FE starts to climb, I would get tested for it.

That's what I thought
 

It's so weird,

I had a Ferretin level of 1650 in June...

Then I had three phlebotomies...

Now I am up to 1900? Yeargh!!!!

I did get tested two days after the third phlebotomy, so maybe that was a little soon and things had been stirred up in my blood.