What is it like to go from 40% to 56% hematocrit?
What is it like to go from 40% to 56%? The difference was, at first, startling. Before realizing I was anemic, doctors had consistently diagnosed me with athletically induced asthma. The inhalers and other medication they gave me, however, did nothing to alleviate the chest pain, shortness of breath, and severe fatigue I felt on a daily basis. It wasn’t until I got blood tests done and saw how low my hematocrit was, and how little concern my doctor had, that I seriously thought about EPO. It wasn’t so much that they were unwilling to help me, as that they didn’t perceive a necessity for me to be helped. They saw I had a hematocrit of 40 and thought “OK, he’s normal”. I thought: “I feel chronically exhausted, I have trouble breathing, and I have a hematocrit of 40… Maybe there’s some connection?” I have read that the top 1% of the population have hematocrits above 53% while only another 1-2 percent are below 42%. If I had naturally had a hematocrit of 54%, I would have been considered
