View Single Post
  #6  
Old Wed Aug 24, 2016, 10:14 AM
Margaret W Margaret W is offline
Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Michigan
Posts: 31
U-M aplastic anemia specialist

Hi! After my counts crashed last fall, I was advised by my DMC hematologist to go to the NIH, but I really didn't have the energy to do that. My records had already been reviewed there, anyway. This doctor then referred me to Dr. Dale Bixby at U-M and I've been seeing him since January. Dr. Bixby has an amazing brain! He may be the smartest hematologist I've ever seen, and to go with that, he has a tremendous bedside manner as well. I've been having a lot of fatigue, shortness of breath and dizziness and Dr. Bixby has sent me for evaluation for pulmonary edema (I had two blood clots, one in each lung, due to being heavily transfused during the C-section delivery of my son back in the '70s). He is able to "connect dots" very quickly and see the big picture of every patient during the evaluation of their aplastic anemia.

It should be noted that there is a whole new culture of "niceness" at the University of Michigan Medical Center that was notably absent when I first started going there as an aplastic anemia patient in the early '70s.

A HUGE problem I'm having lately is that despite the way I feel, most people (family and friends) think I'm a hypochondriac and a faker. I wonder if anyone else deals with that. I am SO TIRED of being told that all I need to do is take iron pills, eat beets, exercise more (avascular necrosis in all major joints from the 16 days of ATG that I had in 1987 is a bar to that). I'm tired of being told to just get off my rear and "get busy." I don't know if anyone else has that problem, but I'm extremely frustrated with it. I'm a caretaker to my ill husband (Parkinson's, Asperger's and ileitis) and his doctors expect me to help him out -- because they don't know what aplastic anemia is. This is approaching the breaking point for me, and all people can say is, "We all knew she was faking those blood problems she claimed she had."

Anyway, thanks just for reading this, and I did want to give people a heads-up as to Dr. Dale Bixby.

Margaret
__________________
Margaret, SAA patient diagnosed 1972; ATG 1987; moderate AA for years; hep. C from transfusion 1987; now SAA is back.

Last edited by Margaret W : Wed Aug 24, 2016 at 12:08 PM.
Reply With Quote