Just Learned

So sometimes I am paranoid about my platelet count. When it breaks 500 I worry, even though I have been assured and reassured again and again and again that 1. nothing is wrong with me 2. it is not even that high 3. it is good for all the patients at the cancer hospital because I am not only HLA-typed but also give a double dose every time I go in, sometimes a triple. I can't help it though, because if you break 500 you have to have your counts called in to the big hospital across the street. It makes me skiddish.

So today my counts were 530, an all-time day of donation high. I started to sweat a bit. Nevermind that my mother lived for years with a platelet count of 700+ and only after hormonal shifts has it normalized and not a blessed thing was ever wrong with her and today she is perfectly healthy - and that a quite reasonable explanation for my elevated count is my mother's elevated count. Forget the fact that my mother's hematologist said that doctors tend not to get worked up if you have no other symptoms or weird counts and just high platelets as long as they are under a million or so. Oh no, let's not be rational. Let's freak out. Let's think we're predisposed to some blood disorder, leukemia or some yet undiscovered platelet malfunction. LET'S PANIC!!!

Of course there is the wonder of google. I googled query regarding genetics and platelet count. I googled platelet counts and birth control, and then I stumbled upon one comment on a medical forum citing a high platelet count due to low grade anemia! So let's do a roundup here
1. Genetic Predisposition due to a parent's high platelet count
CHECK
2. Use of oral contraceptives, which can elevate a platelet count
CHECK
3. A tendency towards low grade anemia
CHECK (my Hgb has been in the 12's and sometimes even the 13's for the most part with regular use of vitamins and spirulina, but occasionally I'll go in after a few weeks of staying up late and eating literally all carbs, fat and sugar and my Hgb will have tanked to 11.8 or something)

So there are three very reasonable and incredibly benign explanations for my high platelets. I am like the poster child for naturally high, nothing to worry about but awesome to donate platelets.

Yet why do I keep freaking out? Sigh.
Anyways, after this day of falling asleep at desks and panicking while attached to a large machine drawing out my blood and sending it back in, I am off to meet my sister at the nail salon. Pedicure it is!