Idiopathic Secondary polycythemia-help

Posted by frances88 @frances88, 14 hours ago

Good morning! Recently I was diagnosed with secondary polycythemia. Currently idiopathic as none of the test have been conclusive as to what’s causing this. Even my hematologist is confused. I am 37 years old, five feet three inches and weigh 128 lbs. I’m also adopted so no familial history, only health problem I currently have is high blood pressure. I’m a former smoker and vape occasionally. I am a mother of 2 girls and a medical assistant, I’m pretty active and going 24/7( just to give anyone reading this a little info about me) My hematocrit hit 64 on a routine blood test and my primary sent me to a hematologist. Everyone was positive I had PV. My EPO was elevated, my hematocrit/hgb elevated, rbc elevated, platelets elevated, b12 was low and folate was high. Bone marrow biopsy was negative, no lesions on the ct scans on chest and abdomen, echo of heart was normal to rule out right to left shunting. Hematologist said your young, thin, no husband that has testosterone that could rub off on you possibly causing this, all test negative, the last thing he wanted me to do was a sleep study, but then test showed my levels coming down, so then he put a pause on the sleep study since if my numbers were coming down then he didn’t suspect that. I went through blood test to dive into my folate being high, no MTHFR gene present. Everyone was just confused. I started getting b12 shots to improve my b12, and do phlebotomy as needed. I just don’t want to pass away from this early, like from day, stroke etc. it’s been on the back burner since we are just treating it therapeutically. Today I got to reading about Chuvash polycythemia. So basically I was hoping for anyone to share their experiences/knowledge on idiopathic polycythemia or anything else I should do to help dive further into the causes etc. thanks in advance!

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