Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Dallas Support Group Meeting: November 12, 2016

Greetings, loyal blog readers. Long time no see. You may have noticed I did not have a new post in October. No need to fear, though. Although things are a little crazy here for a number of reasons, making it all too easy to put the blog on the back burner, everything is fine.

Today's post will be an update on my anemia situation, followed by my account of the Dallas support group meeting in November. Since I did not post anything in October, the end of this post will have the monthly blog stats for not just one but two months. Bonus!

In the previous post I mentioned that I started taking iron supplements in September at the recommendation of my hematologist, Dr. C. In September my hemoglobin had increased slightly to 13.3, but my ferritin was 5, which is very low. (Normal for men is 18 to 270.) I saw Dr. C in October after one month of taking the iron supplements, and my hemoglobin had increased to 14.3, which is within the normal range. My ferritin was still a little low at 15, but that definitely indicates the iron supplements are working and my iron storage is improving. Dr. C wants me to continue taking the iron supplements and see him again toward the end of December. So all that is good news. Hopefully I can stop taking the iron supplements in December and everything will be back to normal for my next annual physical exam in February or March of 2017.

The Dallas support group meeting was held on November 12, 2016. There were 22 attendees, including the guest speaker, Dr. Gonsalves from Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Fourteen of the 22 attendees were amyloidosis patients, with about half of those being diagnosed with AL amyloidosis. There were a few localized and some ALECT2 patients, and unless I missed hearing about someone's diagnosis, I think I was the only familial patient there.

Dr. G's presentation focused primarily on AL amyloidosis and current clinical trials, but it did include some slides about ALECT2, which he spent some time discussing since there were three ALECT2 patients at the meeting. ALECT2 is a relatively new type of amyloidosis that may turn out to be the third most common type. An interesting fact about ALECT2 is that it seems to have a genetic component although it does not appear to be the result of an inherited mutation like ATTR or fibrinogen amyloidosis. I suspect we will start hearing much more about ALECT2 in the general amyloidosis discussions going forward.

That's all for now. See you next month. Maybe . . .


=====Monthly Blog Status Update=====

As of September 30, 2016:

Total posts: 171 (1 in September)

Total pageviews: 48,300 (~1700 in September)

Email subscribers: 14 (unchanged)

Total number of countries that have viewed the blog: 131

One new country viewed the blog in September:

Turkmenistan

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=====Monthly Blog Status Update=====

As of October 31, 2016:

Total posts: 171 (0 in October)

Total pageviews: 50,000 (~1700 in October)

Email subscribers: 14 (unchanged)

Total number of countries that have viewed the blog: 131

No new countries viewed the blog in October.
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