Assessing, reassessing and then reassessing again, blood work results

[Phillies Phan]

I guess I’m not the only one who does this, and this past week it has been driving me insane. I was in the ER back in June of this year and they ran a CBC, the typical blood work. At the time, there were a couple readings that said “H” next to them. I got home and Googled them and fortunately, they were nominally high and had nothing scary associated with them.

Fast forward to this week. My OCD is at an all time high. I pulled this old printout from June and looked it over again. I realized that probably since the ER doctor was busy, he just gave me a copy of the results right off the printer. As such, it didn’t have the reference ranges for each entry. So, even though none of the results (other than the original 2) were marked as low or high, I began looking up typical reference ranges. I also compared those numbers with old blood work results from 2021.

I noticed low normal, high normal numbers in my June results. I noticed how certain numbers, while staying “normal” had gotten lower, or higher from the 2021 blood work to the recent one. I started obsessing; are these trends that will continue in the future to readings that will be too high or too low, meaning out of range?

This week I have literally either diagnosed myself with, or now have the fear of everything from chronic leukemia, to aggressive lymphomas, and even things like ”p 17 deletions” as they related to genes and worse outcomes and early death!

I hate this. I have spent probably a dozen hours recently googling, and especially using AI bots asking all kinds of questions. All of this starting from June blood work that initially looked totally fine. UGH.

 

[Sweet T]

Are you feeling tired or anything?

 

[Phillies Phan]

Are you feeling tired or anything?

Not at all.

 

[Sweet T]

Not at all.

I’d think you’d have symptoms by now if you had leukemia or lymphoma.

also some ranges of labs are different so I’m not sure you could compare to something from 2021. For example I had my estrogen tested last year and my normal lab ranges were different between 2 tests.

 

[bin_tenn]

I guess I’m not the only one who does this, and this past week it has been driving me insane. I was in the ER back in June of this year and they ran a CBC, the typical blood work. At the time, there were a couple readings that said “H” next to them. I got home and Googled them and fortunately, they were nominally high and had nothing scary associated with them.

Fast forward to this week. My OCD is at an all time high. I pulled this old printout from June and looked it over again. I realized that probably since the ER doctor was busy, he just gave me a copy of the results right off the printer. As such, it didn’t have the reference ranges for each entry. So, even though none of the results (other than the original 2) were marked as low or high, I began looking up typical reference ranges. I also compared those numbers with old blood work results from 2021.

I noticed low normal, high normal numbers in my June results. I noticed how certain numbers, while staying “normal” had gotten lower, or higher from the 2021 blood work to the recent one. I started obsessing; are these trends that will continue in the future to readings that will be too high or too low, meaning out of range?

This week I have literally either diagnosed myself with, or now have the fear of everything from chronic leukemia, to aggressive lymphomas, and even things like ”p 17 deletions” as they related to genes and worse outcomes and early death!

I hate this. I have spent probably a dozen hours recently googling, and especially using AI bots asking all kinds of questions. All of this starting from June blood work that initially looked totally fine. UGH.

You're not alone. I do this sometimes, too, checking old results again and doubting them. When I feel the urge to go back and look again I try to tell myself things were fine, and there's no need to check again. Obviously the results won't change, they'll be the same as when I first looked after I had it done to begin with.