As 2023 comes to a close, I’m thinking about all the things that have happened in just one short year. Like every year, it has been a rollercoaster of ups and downs, twists and turns, laughs and tears. Physically for me, it’s been a hard year as I’ve been poked and prodded, have had scans and a bone marrow biopsy and more blood tests than I can count, all because I have compensatory erythroid hyperplasia and severe anemia (but not iron deficient) as well as an enlarged spleen. So what this means is, I have an over abundance of red blood cell production but the red blood cells are dying off quickly and not giving my organs the amount of oxygen they should. The dead cells appear to collect in the spleen causing it to be enlarged. The dying cells have caused the severe anemia, but the cause for the cells dying is still a mystery. The good news is, I don’t have any obvious cancers which was the first concern. My oncologist suspected leukemia or non Hodgkin’s lymphoma but thankfully as of ...