Coburn Kids

Yesterday we went for Caden’s blood test, with the almost I’m-pretty-sure-he-has-an-iron-deficiency-because-of-all-the-signs mentality. He has spooned fingernails, he’s been very tired lately, he’s been irritable, he’s a preemie so it wouldn’t be all that surprising.  In addition, we haven’t been giving him his iron drops for months (he’s supposed to get them until 12-15 months old… bad mom I know) and he’s just on a regular formula now.  But noooooooo, Caden has to blindside me with his hemoglobin results.  He’s a 17.  I was pretty clueless to what a 17 meant too so I’ll explain.

Normal hemoglobin in a child 6 months old – 3 years old is 11-13 gm/dl.  Caden is a 17 gm/dl.  It’s extremely high. Way too high. Especially for a preemie who has had numerous surgeries. And just for my science lessons here, hemoglobin tests measure the amount of red blood cells in your bloodstream.  More of them means that your blood is thicker.  Thick blood = bad. Turns out my neglectful parenting could be a great thing!  That and the preemie clinic doctors were so sure of an iron deficiency too that they wanted me to increase his iron!

So today I am headed up to Primary Children’s (again) to get a full blood work up on Caden that involves filling 5 vials.  He won’t be happy. And because everyone has asked, no I’m not really sure what all this means. I’ve done some research and besides maybe some pulmonary hypertension nothing sounds like anything Caden has.  Not that pulmonary hypertension is something to be casual about because it’s very serious but literally… nothing else fits. So his test results will be interesting. I am right now leaning toward a possible fluke, where it just measured high for no reason.