So, here's the long and short of it: currently undiagnosed, IBD-like symptoms since May on top of lifetime of intermittent, persistent bowel trouble.
I told my GI early last week (via email) I was having ultra-dark stool with a lot of undigested food. He got back to me, said to go to the ER if my stool was black, and if that didn't happen to come in for a quick CBC -- course of action to be determined. Of course, the blackish bms immediately stopped.
Blood test was Friday. I emailed the GI yesterday to ask about it. Then, last night when I was paying a bill from the third party that runs my labs, I noticed my results were online and gave them a look.
I'm kind of alarmed my doctor hasn't seen fit to call me yet since his office has had these results since Saturday: I'm on the verge of this lab's criteria for absolute lymphocytosis, (4.4, high cutoff is 4.5) -- and WAY past the relative lymphocytosis mark. The cutoff is 46%. I'm at 53%.
Scarier than the lymphocyte number itself is the fact that it's lasted what (I think) is too long for something like mono, and it seems to be accelerating. In June, I was at 3.6. I was at 3.8 on July 29th. That 4.4 was from August 16th.
Obviously the neut % is low because of the relative number of lymphocytes, but the absolute count has been falling since June, too: 4.1 in June, 3.3 in July, 2.8 a few days ago.
On top of that, in June, my RBC, hemoglobin and hematocrit were 4.59, 14, and 41.8 repsectively. A few days ago, I was at 4.17 RBC, 12.9 hemoglobin and 38.2 hematocrit. All are still within normal range, but it seems like that's a fairly significant drop -- especially the RBC. (Neither test was close to my period either so that's probably not a factor.)
Other than that, my blood sugar's been weird -- high 90s when fasting and 70s when I'm not fasting, and for some reason, my my last metabolic panel showed a protein deficiency (nonspecific -- albumin and globulin were both low normal, just didn't add up to a high enough total.)
I'm freaking OUT because no one will get back to me because everything I've read makes it seem like the real issue might be cancer, specifically leukemia or lymphoma.
I don't know what to do and I'm scared. At first, my symptoms looked like IBD: diarrhea, bloody stool, crampy abdominal pain regardless of BMs, some weight loss, fatigue. But since then, I've also seen some other, vaguer, scarier stuff: unexplained sore muscles, brief dull pain shooting in my lymph nodes, intermittent fever, occasional night sweats.
Has anyone had similar symptoms to these and had it proved to be Crohn's, NOT cancer?
(For what it's worth, I've had an EGD that showed minor erosions in my antrum and a CT that was mostly clear but had less than ideal sensitivity because several loops of my bowel didn't light up. CT was clear otherwise too, except for some cysts and a tiny liver spot, neither of which were problemmatic according to my doctor.)
I can't believe I'm saying this now, but at this point, I'd be happy to have Crohn's. I'm too young for the other possibilities and have too much life to live.
I told my GI early last week (via email) I was having ultra-dark stool with a lot of undigested food. He got back to me, said to go to the ER if my stool was black, and if that didn't happen to come in for a quick CBC -- course of action to be determined. Of course, the blackish bms immediately stopped.
Blood test was Friday. I emailed the GI yesterday to ask about it. Then, last night when I was paying a bill from the third party that runs my labs, I noticed my results were online and gave them a look.
I'm kind of alarmed my doctor hasn't seen fit to call me yet since his office has had these results since Saturday: I'm on the verge of this lab's criteria for absolute lymphocytosis, (4.4, high cutoff is 4.5) -- and WAY past the relative lymphocytosis mark. The cutoff is 46%. I'm at 53%.
Scarier than the lymphocyte number itself is the fact that it's lasted what (I think) is too long for something like mono, and it seems to be accelerating. In June, I was at 3.6. I was at 3.8 on July 29th. That 4.4 was from August 16th.
Obviously the neut % is low because of the relative number of lymphocytes, but the absolute count has been falling since June, too: 4.1 in June, 3.3 in July, 2.8 a few days ago.
On top of that, in June, my RBC, hemoglobin and hematocrit were 4.59, 14, and 41.8 repsectively. A few days ago, I was at 4.17 RBC, 12.9 hemoglobin and 38.2 hematocrit. All are still within normal range, but it seems like that's a fairly significant drop -- especially the RBC. (Neither test was close to my period either so that's probably not a factor.)
Other than that, my blood sugar's been weird -- high 90s when fasting and 70s when I'm not fasting, and for some reason, my my last metabolic panel showed a protein deficiency (nonspecific -- albumin and globulin were both low normal, just didn't add up to a high enough total.)
I'm freaking OUT because no one will get back to me because everything I've read makes it seem like the real issue might be cancer, specifically leukemia or lymphoma.
I don't know what to do and I'm scared. At first, my symptoms looked like IBD: diarrhea, bloody stool, crampy abdominal pain regardless of BMs, some weight loss, fatigue. But since then, I've also seen some other, vaguer, scarier stuff: unexplained sore muscles, brief dull pain shooting in my lymph nodes, intermittent fever, occasional night sweats.
Has anyone had similar symptoms to these and had it proved to be Crohn's, NOT cancer?
(For what it's worth, I've had an EGD that showed minor erosions in my antrum and a CT that was mostly clear but had less than ideal sensitivity because several loops of my bowel didn't light up. CT was clear otherwise too, except for some cysts and a tiny liver spot, neither of which were problemmatic according to my doctor.)
I can't believe I'm saying this now, but at this point, I'd be happy to have Crohn's. I'm too young for the other possibilities and have too much life to live.
