New update: I have once again gone anemic and my ferritin was one indicator and a spike in my red blood cells which I was taught happens right before the drop. She said my numbers show I should feel awful. Iron infusion Monday.
ANEMIA POST link at bottom.
If your fatigue from Lyme gets beyond your normal fatigue please have your Ferritin checked. Symtoms of anemia may be extreme weakness, dizziness, vertigo, blurred vision, tongue may be sore or feel burnt, heart racing, headaches , tremors etc.. so the confusion lies in that those symptoms are already familiar to someone with these diseases so feeling them doesnt trigger a "whats wrong with me" thought. But the increase in those was anemia.
Babesia ( in my case) caused anemia. Bartonella can also cause. So can Erhlichia. Lucky me, I have all 3 plus Rocky mountain spotted fever and others I dont focus on. Because come on, i have to focus on these. It's enough. I went months growing weaker to the point of it being hard to walk around. I advocated for myself once again and demanded to see a hemotologist. He checked many iron labs but most importantly Ferritin. I was already critical and needed iron infusion at hospital infusion room 7 months ago. So standard labs do NOT look for this. Much lower could have killed me.
I could feel it happening again 7 months later, requested to be tested early and BAM I was right, it was almost critical again, so just had another iron infusion last week. It takes about 3 weeks for it to reach the bone marrow to make me feel better. So my message is, be aware and ask to have your Ferritin checked occasionally especially if you have Babesia, although Bartonella and Erhlichia can cause as well. I have all three so I have to watch it. Bloodwork shows my Babesia is the main culprit in me. In 7 months my body consumed all iron stores I had.
Hope this helps in case you are missing a current piece to your lyme puzzle. As you know, lyme and co infections cause multiple problems in the body and this is one of mine.
Since we get used to horrible fatigue , we can clearly think this is "our" normal but it could have killed me thinking that. Advocate for yourself, we have to save ourselves over and over again. Dont put 100% faith that your doctors will keep an eye on this because they are already used to us having a million symptoms. If we went from healthy to this they may think to check. Check all of these labs for full picture of what is going on.
CBC and differential
CMP
IRON AND TIBC
FERRITIN
TRANSFERRIN
FOLATE
B12
ANEMIA IN LYME AND CO
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