Anemia - Part 2

A blood lab tech comes in at 5am to take more. I tell him I'm supposed to have it drawn at 8am. He says I'm on the schedule and takes blood anyway. I tell him I have a shunt. Can't use it because they can't use the 'innie' for outgoing blood.

Time to try to drift off again. Or go to the bathroom.

Eventually, they take blood again. Eventually, the doctors begin to make the rounds.

They want me to stay. The bloodcount is up to 9.7 and that is more than double the admission number. (That must have been around 4 - they wouldn't tell me.) They want to scope me down and up to look for sites that are bleeding. And possibly do the 'swallow the camera' pill to check the small intestine if they don't see anything on the first 2 tests. The head honcho gastroenterologist must have mentioned cancer about 3 times as a possibility to eliminate.

I am feeling like anything but an intelligent human being at this point.

I have been taking NSAIDS in the form of Advil and Vimovo. Way more than 1000 mg per day before I started the Vimovo. I went through this a few years ago when I was taking Aleve. I had the scopes. They found irritation and nothing else, no active bleeding. And that was when I was throwing up brown stuff.

I HAVE RA.

I have been in the hospital 18 hours with 2 classic symptoms of RA (anemia and low vitamin D) and no one has: 

• given me any pain meds
• shown a rheumatologist the door to my room

I took the gastro's card and checked out of the hospital. The admitting Dr's stand-in had to release me. She insisted I could not be treated by a GP or PA for rheumatoid autoimmune disease. I can ONLY be treated by a rheumatologist. She gave me a prescription for Vicodin with Aleve. Even though she is not a rheumatologist.


I'll continue to take iron pills and vitamin D and see my PA. Who at least knows I have RA, even if I have to wait for him to learn more about it by treating me.