[Greg H]

Hey Cheryl!

There are several folks on the forum that are better than I am on supplements and such; I hope one of them will weigh in.

I'm not sure about your doc's dismissal of the low iron stores. I need to know more about that, so I'll do some research and report back. I think you need to have enough iron stores to make red blood cells. But it may be that having a low cell count in your marrow sort of automatically means you have low iron stores. Let me look into that.

Personally, I'd work with my primary instead of my hematologist on the vitamin deficiency think, though your heme should have ordered up B12, folate, copper, and the various iron tests as a matter of course. My primary is the kind of doc who's not afraid to recommend supplements and he does a soup-to-nuts lab workup once a year. That would probably be worthwhile, just to make sure there's not something obvious that everyone is overlooking.

One of the hard things about MDS and AA is that they are rare disease. Docs and even hematologists don't see them everyday. And even all the aspects of how the marrow works, and, especially, what can mess it up, is still being sorted out in the big research institutions. So it can be pretty hard to get answers to some basic questions, like: What can I do to keep my marrow strong?

I hate that your intro to this whole thing went so badly. Most health care folks are great; but some really stink. Sounds like you got a couple of stinkers.

Stuff you don't understand about your labs or bone marrows -- just ask about them here. There are lots of smart folks. I'm going to break down the info you posted about your marrow in a subsequent post a little later to see if that is useful to you.

Take care!

Greg