Getting the Diagnosis
April 18th, 2008
When I was first diagnosed with hereditary hemochromatosis, it was discovered because after a routing blood check/physical my doctor said my iron levels were elevated. They were in fact, off the charts. We spent two weeks, checked again, and my iron levels were still highly elevated. The next thing we did at this point is to take the test for the genetic mutation. This is important because it allows the doctor to rule out other forms of hemochromatosis (alcohol related, etc.) and also allow syour blood to be eligible for community donation in many (all?) states.
September 27th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
When I was diagnosed with very high Ferritin, the Doctor did a liver biopsy to make sure I had iron in the liver. Wrong! Several other tests are now available (including doing successive blood draws) that make a liver biopsy a bad choice. Get s second opinion before any liver biopsy.