Anemia Adventure

I am a frequent blood donor. I’ve given blood 64 times in the years since we moved home to the Auburn area, more than 9 gallons. I have the type of blood that blood centers love: O negative, which means I’m a universal donor and anybody can receive my blood, and CMV negative, which makes my blood safe for babies. I confess that my reasons for donating have not been entirely altruistic, though; I have definitely donated blood for selfish reasons. Years ago, every blood donation would net me a movie ticket. My husband and I used to schedule our appointments together and would save our points so eventually we’d have enough to take our whole family to a show.

BloodSource used to be the company that ran our local blood bank. One year, I received a letter telling me that they were deferring me from donating for a year. (Sad! No movie tickets!) Apparently, my ferritin stores were low. Blood banks always make sure that donors have adequate hemoglobin before donating, but ferritin is a different iron marker. I guess BloodSource occasionally checked this for frequent donors.

There is a new blood donation company in town, one that took over from BloodSource: Vitalant. Maybe Vitalant doesn’t do ferritin testing? Because recently, after my last blood donation, I noticed a few peculiar sensations. I woke up at 3:00 am the other morning and couldn’t go back to sleep because my legs were twitching, like they had minds of their own and did not want to be resting in bed. Also, maybe I was a little more tired than usual? Possibly slightly pale?

My children continually remind me not to trust Doctor AI, but in this case, Doctor AI was very helpful. I asked what it could mean that I had given blood recently, that I woke up with twitchy legs, and that also one marker in a recent blood count my doctor had ordered seemed a little off.

“Get thee to a doctor and get your ferritin tested,” AI told me. “Do not wait. Do it now.”

Doctor AI was a little bossy.

It was Christmas Eve eve. It did not seem likely that I would be able to get that test done before life shut down for the holidays. But I sent my doctor an email, she ordered the ferritin test, and I finished work in time on Tuesday to make it to the lab before they closed at 5:30 pm.

I woke up the next morning, Christmas Eve, to this message that arrived before 8:00 am from a doctor who was not even my own: “Your iron levels are low which is causing anemia,” he said. “Are you taking any iron supplements?”

No. No, I was not.

But I am now.

Sometimes you get news from your doctor that explains things. The fact that I am anemic—so helpful to know! Now the leg twitching makes sense, also that I’ve been tired lately—to the point that some days I’ve gotten home from work and haven’t been able to do much but sit on the couch.

I dug into Vitalant’s website and deep within it found that they encourage frequent blood donors to take an iron supplement “for at least 60 days after donating whole blood.” Nobody at the blood bank ever told me I might want to do this. I also can’t find this factoid on the Vitalant app, which is where I normally schedule my appointments (and cash in my points for Amazon gift cards, since movie tickets aren’t available anymore).

So apparently I shouldn’t donate blood for a while; BloodSource had me wait an entire year when they discovered my ferritin levels were low. I’ll talk with my doctor and see what she thinks. I’d feel bad about going that long, but it might be necessary, because I have somehow regularly donated myself into an unfortunate case of anemia. It takes time to recover from this. It probably won’t surprise you that I am possibly prone to not taking care of myself as well as I should. Because Vitalant loves me: they love my blood, and I love that my blood helps everyone and even babies!  But it can’t be at my expense, right? Maybe that’s one of the lessons here. It shouldn’t hurt me to help others—because right now, unfortunately, it is.