Hi Rose, You were recently diagnosied with ET, which means your body is producing too many platelets. You most likely developed this conditon slowly over years. So, try to think of it this way, essentially, there’s nothing that has abruptily changed for you except that you now know about the conditon.

It’s difficult to know why this change occured and often there is no obvious assignable cause. Usually what happens is that our bodies can acquire mutations over our years of life creating defects in a DNA.

Having this diagnosis shouldn’t change how you enjoy yourself. If you are on medication such as Hydroxyurea, that may lower the efficiency of your immune system. So, while you can still do all your normal activities, you might want to wear an N-95 mask to offer a level of protection when you’re gardening or running the lawn mower to avoid fungal infections and you’ll want to take precautions such as keeping vaccinations up to date and following basic guidlines for keeping healthy like you would during flu season, etc..

It’s almost impossible to avoid chemicals in our daily life anymore. We have exposure from everyting including our environment. You can try switching to all natural products for laundry, cleaning and such. But even they can have harmful elements. I had a very aggressive blood cancer 5 years ago and quite frankly, while I’m cautious not to expose myself to things like Round up or other nasty lawn products, I pretty much live life like I did before. It’s important to not live in fear.

As far as dying your hair goes, this is an excerpt from the Cancer Society’s web page:
“It’s not clear how much personal hair dye use might raise cancer risk, if at all. S o far, most studies have not found a strong link between hair dye use and cancer, but more research is needed to help clarify this issue”. Here is the full link. https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/hair-dyes.html

Has your doctor mentioned an involvement of mutated genes such as JAK2. Are you on a treatment plan to keep your platelets to a more normal level?