HHC-The Silent Killer

Well it has certainly been a while since I have last written anything, apart from the
random little fun facts in my blog. Not really delving into anything too deeply. In
part, I suppose it is because life has kept me busy and thus insufficient time to really
get into blogging in any great detail.

One area in particular zapping pretty much all of my energies almost entirely.
For a few years and with an even greater emphasis over the past several months I
have been very concerned about the overall health of my husband. Recently
culminating with his worrisome description of a feeling of impending doom, a general unwellness beginning in his toes and surging upwards, full body aches, total
exhaustion and yet at the same time intense unease and the strongest compulsion to
want to crawl out of one's own skin.

"It is as if," he recalls for me, "someone has injected diesel fuel or some other poison
in your toes and it is spreading rapidly throughout your body."
Probably the best way to articulate the feelings that are then linked to a terrifying and
foreboding thought process. The time in between, the waiting and wondering until the fateful day and an all telling appointment with a Hematologist arrives.
A day when all of his fears will either be realized, given the past medical history of his
brother and many aunts, uncles and cousins and their horrific lost battles with cancer ended tragically very early in life. Or will some other explanation be offered?

It is a calm and quiet morning in the hospital's Oncology/Hematology department. It
is easy to determine what most patients are here for. Rarely locking eyes with anyone, together we take our seats and wait for the lab technician to gather he and I to take three seemingly innocuous tubes of blood and then return us to the waiting room, once more. Three little tubes, unknown to us at that moment, that have the potential to change our lives forever.

Returning to our seats, the time passing slowly but with each minute I am more and
more certain that at the very least a testing of his blood will produce a "verbal" result
and thereby some degree of a certain diagnosis before the day is through.
Sitting next to him, offering nothing but support, a little voice hisses at me. "What
if..." I sigh, "what if its not as little as you have thought? What if, it really is cancer?" I
gulp hard and force my brain to think of something, anything else. I have been down
this road once before...caring for my previous husband right up until the end and
refusing to believe that life could once again be so cruel. No there is no way I could
be a widow a second time in only as little as a five year span. Certainly not twice at
not yet forty-three. Our daughter of only age 11, to consider as well.
We are at last brought into to meet the specialist and after exchanging certain
pleasantries she asks my husband to comment on his overall health, the past several
months and soon flat out states, that he does in fact have HHC, Hereditary
Hemachromotosis. Something he was in fact born with and that because most of the
medical field has erroneously been lead to believe is rare (wrongfully perceived) and thus seldom diagnosed in time because most are not educated to know the warning signs/symptoms or origins of it. While it is true that it is generally thought to be non life threatening, that is only true if the illness is detected and treated early enough on. If left untreated it can contribute to many serious and potentially fatal ailments that include, Type 2 Diabetes, Cirrhosis, Cancer, Congestive Heart Failure, Parkinson Disease, Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. It can cause several mood disorders such as anxiety and anger disorders and may be misdiagnosed as Bipolar and Borderline Personality Disorders. The medications used to effectively treat those disorders not only permanently altering the recipient's brain chemistry but proving to yield catastrophic results , including suicide, if medications are taken unnecessarily.
This disease is essentially an iron overload. It is simply yet perhaps seemingly a touch medieval, best treated through Phlebotomy or in layman's terms, blood letting.
*to be continued in further blogging installments.