The story of Sasha
In the summer of 2009 I started feeling super tired, a flight of stairs would make me feel as if I had run a marathon. Then I started getting bruises, gums bleeding easily so I went to my general doctor to have a look. The first one said I was…drumroll please…in love and fat. You read that right, she said I was just out of shape (she literally said fat) and in love. Not happy with her, who would be really, we went to another general doctor. This doctor did 3 blood tests because she could not believe what came out: over 2,000,000 platelets.
A few months later I visited a hematologist which prescribed aspirin which made me feel a lot worse. A month later she did the bone marrow biopsy and aspiration and as soon as the results were in I was diagnosed with Essential Thrombocythemia, an illness only people above 60 get and I was just 18 at that moment. Long story short, I was one of the first to have that illness with that age in the area of Spain at that moment and they really didn’t know where to go with it. I was frustrated because no one could help me so I reached out to people online in similar situations and opened up a blog where I have been able to connect with more people.
I’ve been on different treatments, different diets, different lifestyles but nothing has seemed to make my illness a bit easier except for one thing: staying positive. At the moment I can not work due to a Portal Vein Thrombosis which has caused several complications in my body, incluiding severe stomach pain. And 3 years ago they discovered I was at the initial stages of Myelofibrosis, which is not good at all. However, I try to stay positive as much as I can despite everything that has happened.