After a week of worrying, today we finally got the results of a few blood tests that were performed on Erik last week. For quite some time now, Erik has had a slightly elevated temperature (98.9-99.7F) (37.1-37.6C) so his doctor decided to do some blood work to be on the safe side. Last monday, some quick blood-work indicated that Erik was anemic and some other unusual results. Since we knew from before that Jason had thalassemia, which is a form of hereditary anemia, it was likely that Erik had the same thing. However, due to the long-lasting low-grade fever, there was a slight but scary possiblity that Erik had something more serious (such as leukemia). Also, his newborn screen showed no sign of thalassemia (and they are 94% accurate).
Well, today we were happy to find out it's "only" thalassemia beta minor.
The doctor thinks that the low-grade fever is due to the fact that Erik's bone marrow is trying to make more red blood-cells. Also, when Erik was born we opted to wait with cutting the cord until it stopped pulsating. That way, the baby gets 30-50% more blood. It's been a bad habit during the last couple of centuries to cut the cord as soon as the baby comes out. Anyway, that's why his iron stores were fine after birth and his anemia couldn't be found on the newborn screen. So happy we made that choice...
vad skont att det "bara" var det dvs inget allvarligt!
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