Hoisting a Pint

or, the Annals of Polycythemia Vera (in Vera Veritas)


Two weeks ago I went to LifeSource and got a pint of blood removed. I go again on Tuesday. I asked the phlebotomist why my blood couldn't be donated and she said because it won't be tested. Which of course begs the question.... Why not test it?

I think the blood-letting has helped. I may be getting less red in the face and sweating less upon exertion and upon hot-flashing.

The other morning I woke up and thought I heard that British veterans with my disease were suing the govenrment. I figured it had to be part of my dreamworld, but it was real. Apparently hundreds of British and New Zealand servicemen witnessed nuclear tests in the South Pacific in the 1950s, and claim that the radiation exposure caused them to develop polycythemia and other illnesses. Some suffered immediate effects from the radiation: "Several chaps lost teeth, and others lost their hair," according to a serviceman who was 18 at the time and a radio operator aboard a HMS. "So a lot of wives and sweethearts waited in Devonport to welcome back bald fiances and bald boyfriends with a few teeth missing," Others developed PV later or cancers. Some 700 of them have banded together to sue the British Dept. of Defence for compensation.

The former radio operator quoted above was diagnosed with polycythemia in 1974. The BBC refers to it as "a rare form of blood cancer" that his doctors have linked to his exposure to radiation. (For his sake and the sake of the lawsuit, the disease should be as dire as possible; it's sometimes considered pre-cancerous, as a small percentage of people with it develop leukemia, and it's sometimes considered cancer, but it's not really cancer-cancer.)

I felt like saying, "Aha," when I read about the British lawsuit, though I have never sailed the high seas for the United Kingdom. I'm of a mind to blame large institutions for bad things that happen to people. (See my book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Blame the Military-Industrial Complex. ;>))But I was never around a nuclear test. I had a lot of chest X-rays as a child because of my asthma and the two times I had pneumonia, but how could I ever prove a connection between the X-rays and the polycythemia? I'm not part of a group of sailors or soldiers or anything else that had repeated chest X-rays. I am a lone Cancer Bitch from the lone prairie. With extra-thick blood and a bad attitude.

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Blut und Boden

So. I've got a new disease. Or condition. It's rare, only five people per million are diagnosed with it annually. I think "people" might mean Americans, or rather, US residents--because "Americans" includes people from the Arctic Archipelago to Tierra del Fuego. But I'm dancing around the point. Attentive readers of this blog will recall that I have too many platelets in my blood (AKA essential thrombocythemia). I've found out I also have too many red blood cells. The official term is polycythemia vera . I have the non-hereditary gene mutation, JAK2, which is found in 95 percent of the people who have this. My hematologist (you know you're in trouble when you have a hematologist) told me yesterday I probably had it, and she looked at my blood results today and confirmed it. I make too many things, I said to the hematologist yesterday--starting with cancer, which is the production of too many cells in an uncontrolled way. She said, Yes, you make too many things. The first-line treatment for this, she told me, comes from the 13th century. Leeches? I asked, because I'd seen an article in the New Yorker about their use but hadn't read the piece yet. Not leeches, she said, but you get a phlebotomy. You go to LifeSource and get a pint taken out. You can't donate this pint because it's filled with too-thick blood. Where does it go? I asked. Probably into a biohazard bag and then to a landfill, she said. I thought of my blood seeping into the earth. Blut und Boden.

It seems a shame to waste this blood. To spill it. If Venus flytraps snap up hamburger meat, couldn't they sup on some blood? Could blood be used as plant food? (Alas, I am finding through the 'net that flytraps feed on bugs, not hamburger meat.) Believe it or not, someone else has thought to ask about feeding blood to the flytraps. Unfortunately, you can't tell if the answers have merit.

So the plan is to give a pint on Tuesday (the first time I could get an appointment) and then two weeks later, then go to Fancy Hospital to get my blood tested, talk to the doctor, and probably have two more sessions two weeks apart. From there I would probably get my "prophylactic phlebotomy" every one, two or three months.

I need to rid myself of this thick blood because otherwise it maybe maybe maybe could cause blood clots, stroke, heart attack. I am a funny person to have this disease because it most often strikes men over 60. I have learned what the signs of a blood clot are and that you can get an ultrasound to show if you have one. If this "venesection," as the Brits call it, doesn't work, then there's Plan B, which involves chemotherapy. Mild. In the form of a pill called hydroxyurea.

There are other funny (strange, not ha-ha) things. My hematologist asked if I had itching. I said, mostly after taking a shower, and she said that's a symptom. It's funny because it's a phenomenon I had noticed but I hadn't thought it meant anything. I also had noticed that my gums were bleeding after flossing, and that's a symptom, too. I also have hot flashes, which is not news to attentive blog readers or anyone who has been in a room with me lately. While flashing, my face and ears turn red. The doctor said that the phlebotomy might help with the redness and sweating. So that's good news. (I keep thinking "lobotomy" and have to remind myself that one is brain and one is blood. No ice picks for Cancer Bitch.)

In case you want a leech of your own, click here. Note that leeches are non-returnable.

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