[mausmish]

I don't have an answer regarding your low retic count but I definitely understand why you want the BMB after a stressful year of not knowing what's going on. I'd have been diagnosed much sooner if a couple of my doctors had been more persistent in testing instead of saying there's probably nothing wrong when I had odd but minor symptoms early on that could be attributed to other less serious or even harmless causes. Sometimes you have to trust your knowledge of your own body and the feeling that something is not right. Peace of mind and conversely, stress play a big part in a person's well being and quality of life. Some people prefer to not know because they fear the worst. You sound more like me, i.e., a known is better than an unknown. Fence sitting is very uncomfortable and the truth is often less bad than all the possibilites running through your mind of things that could be wrong. I am fortunate to have found a hematologist who is empathetic to my point of view. I can't count the number of times when he's said something like, "I'm not too worried about [whatever] right now but I understand your worry so let's test further to make sure I'm right." Other times, he has not done additional testing but explained fully why he didn't think it was warranted. Even then, he left the final decision to me.