What is My Probable Life Expectancy?
ET patients have an excellent chance of living out a normal life span if properly monitored and treated as necessary. We had an ET patient in our mpd-net online discussion group who lived to 92 and died of diseases of old age. Forget the old statistics in the medical literature which scared some of us half to death when we were diagnosed in the 80’s. Many physicians did not routinely check platelet counts and this condition would be diagnosed after someone had a heart attack or stroke and was already in trouble. It also once was thought to be a disease of the elderly. The youngest in our mpd-net support group was diagnosed at age 6 years old. Do keep in mind that this is a chronic hematologic malignancy and it is prudent to be monitored regularly by a hematologist, it is important to report any symptoms such as visual distrubances, unexplained pain, numbness, tingling, bruising to your physician, and for those who have had symptoms from their ET, treatment will be required. But it can
