Anxious about anaemia

An unsuspecting lady is misdiagnosed with anxiety instead of iron deficiency. An eye-opening account of her ordeal ...

In the months before she wound up in the emergency room, Deborah Turner would be so exhausted she sometimes had to drag herself up the office stairs clinging to the railing.

Four years ago she had walked a 26.2-mile marathon. Now she was so short of breath, she sometimes had to lie down after brushing her teeth.

Something more
Then 48, Turner suspected that the episodic heavy feeling in her chest and her swollen ankles were the result of less than stellar health habits.

A substantially overweight, self-described workaholic, she spent long hours at two relatively low-paying jobs - as a newspaper reporter and as a web designer.

But she did not think her lifestyle explained the symptoms that had surfaced in the previous year: a burning sensation in her tongue, rapidly thinning hair and incessant feelings of restlessness in her legs when she was asleep.

On June 14, 2005, Turner consulted a family practitioner. Turner said he ordered some blood tests, but not a complete blood count (CBC), once a staple of annual physicals that can detect a broad range of disorders.

"He told me it was possible my iron was low," Turner recalled. But what the doctor focussed on was her emotional state.

The doctor told her the symptoms could be stress related and handed her a prescription for what he thought was the cause of her symptoms: anxiety.

Seven weeks later, back at her desk after a late lunch, Turner said her chest felt so heavy she worried she was having a heart attack.

She drove to the emergency room (ER) of McKenzie Regional Hospital, Tennessee and was seen by Dr Will D. Foston, a former surgeon.

Foston ordered a battery of tests, including a CBC. The CBC showed that Turner's haemoglobin, hematocrit and several measurements involving iron were very low.

All pointed to one diagnosis: anaemia. Anaemia made sense to Turner. Low iron levels had prevented her from donating blood in the past, she said. His next task, Foston said, was to figure out why Turner was anaemic.

After a quick test found no blood in her stool, Foston asked Turner about her period. Turner told him they were very heavy. Heavy menstrual bleeding causes iron deficiency.

Less than two hours after she arrived in the ER, Turner was on her way home, hospital records show. Within a month of starting iron supplements, Turner was walking easily up the office stairs. The burning tongue and restless legs vanished. Her hair grew back.

"I can't help but think that had I bought the (first) diagnosis, I might have taken that prescription and felt no anxiety as I waited for my demise," she said.