http://sites.google.com/site/superdownsyndrome/medical-issues/iron-deficiency-anaemia

I don’t know if they have done tests to assess her iron status but I will find out. Clarify to me as I don’t really understand the difference between the ferritin reading and the standard iron panel, which one should be done and why one over the other, and how all of this relates to blood transfusions and Down Syndrome. I’m still a newbie on all of this and am really confused about how DS and iron are related.

Thank you so much!

“The hospital staff wanted to give Carmen iron supplements because her blood count was low. It was then that I realized that I was going to have to watch these people like a hawk, and I was going to have to learn all this stuff just to keep her safe. I didn’t know which blood tests to run, but I knew in my bones that this was wrong. So, I sat in the hospital room and put calls in to my regular pediatrician, to Dr. Leichtman and to the obstetrician that advised me to keep Carmen away from iron due to all the blood transfusions. As they called me back, I asked them which tests I should ask them to run, and why. Between them all, each with his little piece, I got the right answers (and the right questions) and an education. When that poor doctor came back into the room, he met Scarlet O’Hara standing on the hill, fist in the air, shouting, ‘I will never be buffaloed again!!’

“Actually, I wasn’t nasty to him. I just started asking some tough questions which threw him back on his heels a little bit. I learned from the doctors I called that there were indeed tests that could be run to assess iron status and that if the anemia was not iron-related, then iron supplements were not warranted. So I asked the hospital doctor if he had done a ferritin reading along with a standard iron panel (the right tests to assess this) and once those were done, lo and behold, talk of iron supplementation went away.”

Have they done tests to actually assess Rain’s iron status?