I’m Kia - I’m 25 years old and have had a bit of a pickle over the past year and a half with my health.
For context, in April 2024 I had multiple bilateral pulmonary emboli. These were deemed unprovoked, and I’ve been on anticoagulants since! Ongoing investigations have continued given my age, involving a lot of blood tests… which leads me to now.
As part of investigations into my chronic pain and fatigue, there’s been a consistent elevation in my platelets, which has led my consultant to say that he’s ’highly suspicious of MPNs, namely essential thrombocyaethemia’ (or however it’s meant to be spelled, apologies!).
That’s left me here, doing a bit of nosing around to see if any of you lovely lot might have any advice on what to expect as they intend to start dedicated investigations with the haemotology team. What sort of things would they usually look for if trying to rule out something like MPNs?
We are so sorry to hear that you were diagnosed with multiple pulmonary embolisms and are going through an understandably worrying time.
We’re hoping others may share their experience with you too.
But in terms of Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN)’s your team may carry out further blood monitoring as well as looking for certain genes that may indicate conditions such as Essential thrombocythemia (Essential thrombocythemia (ET)) or Polycythaemia vera (Polycythaemia vera (PV)). These are also done via a blood test.
We hope others can also share their experience and hope this was helpful. If you would like to talk to one of our support services nurses, you can email us via support@bloodcancer.org.uk or call us on 0808 2080 888.
