This article explains a lot. For me it has been a reality trip because aside from impotence, I have had EVERY SINGLE SYMPTOM this man had and I'm 32 years old. I was diagnosed at 29 with a ferritin of 3,166.

I'm not trying to bring everyone down. I'm trying to fit in somewhere. The not knowing why I have black stool, a week long episode of arthritis and extreme fatigue, etc... That's what motivated me to post this. I have another son due in 2 weeks.

I know I may sound a little emotional, but this place and you guys have helped me through the worst of times. I now know what I need to focus on. All of the traveling, the fighting with in-laws, missing my late father, fighting with my wife... It all means nothing after reading this tonight.

He lived 20 years or so in bad conditions. Today I am fighting for more.



http://www.pspinformation.com/disease/otherdiseases/iron_a.shtml


John's first symptom, experienced in his early forties, was profound fatigue. He later said that he felt "washed out and tired all the time."

When he was forty-five, a black stool indicated he had internal bleeding.

John's condition began to deteriorate in a pattern typical of hemochromatosis. He gradually got arthritis, but no one thought that this was related to his liver problem. Besides, he later said that "you sort of get used to arthritis."

Then, at age fifty-one, John had his first attack of angina, the sharp chest pain that signals heart disease. John was told that a coronary bypass operation might solve his heart trouble as well as his fatigue, so he submitted to the operation. But it did nothing to relieve his "washed-out" feeling.


John eventually died in 1990 at the age of sixty-three.

The bloodletting probably extended his life, but not as much as they could have if he had been diagnosed in 1972 instead of nine years later.