Hemo- What?

It's called Hemochromatosis. Ever heard of it? I hadn't heard of it until a few months ago. My brother-in-law found out he had it and therefore the whole family needed to get tested, especially after finding out that my Mother-in-law had it too. So I finally got my husband to go in and get tested too - lo and behold he has it too (which we were not really surprised about once reading symptoms). So what is it?

Hemochromatosis - (in this case as it is hereditary) is a genetic metabolic disorder that results in iron overload; the body absorbs and retains too much dietary iron. This excess iron can affect many organ systems including: heart, liver, pancreas and joints to name a few. There is no cure for this but a simple procedure can maintain it as long as it is caught before irreversible damage is done to the organs affected. All they need to do is take your blood once or twice a week for 12 weeks until the iron levels are maintained as 'normal'. After that it's a few check ups a year to make sure iron levels are not too high.

The difficult thing about hemochromatosis is that the symptoms can be misleading - it mimics symptoms of other problems like: you have joint pain and you think arthritis, you have mood swings you think depression, you have heart pain/irregularities you think heart disease or something similar. If you are interested in a list of symptoms, check out the Canadian Hemochromatosis Society. The interesting thing about this is 1 in 9 Canadians carries the gene for Hemochromatosis and until recently physicians were taught that this was an extremely rare disorder!

In a way, I'm kind of glad that my husband got diagnosed because now he can get help for the symptoms he's been dealing with for the last 3 or 4 years!