Hot Springs Spanish Seventh-day Adventist Company issued the following announcement on July 10.
Minerva Catinean found it difficult to put the lurking hunch to rest. She suspected her health was in an abnormal plummet of sorts, although countless medical appointments failed to track down the root cause of her incessant fatigue. It wasn’t until her visit to the LLU Cancer Center in June 2020 that Catinean obtained a rare cancer diagnosis, swiftly followed by treatment, ending a years-long limbo of unexplained suffering, second-guessing, and unpredictability.
A myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), also referred to as “bone marrow failure disorder,” was responsible for the 67-year-old Loma Linda resident’s lack of energy and stamina. Unusual blood cell counts like low hemoglobin (the blood protein that carries oxygen to the body’s tissues) manifesting as anemia hinted at Catinean’s MDS, which occurs when the blood-forming cells in the bone marrow become abnormal.
“My health was gone,” said Catinean, who had felt this way for three years but only discovered she had MDS last year after visiting LLU. “I felt tired all the time; I was not happy like usual; and I couldn’t do much.”
MDS is an underdiagnosed cancer due to lack of awareness, said hematologist oncologist Mojtaba Akhtari, MD, and MDS risk dismissal is based on commonplace presumptions that less energy and lower blood counts are a natural part of the aging process. Akhtari added it also usually requires a specialized hematopathologist to observe bone marrow under the microscope and attribute an abnormal morphology in blood cells to MDS.
Original source can be found here.
Source: Hot Springs Spanish Seventh-day Adventist Company
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