to think doctor is wrong

[twentytwentyy1]

After a long period of feeling unwell, I had my bloods taken for test and after looking at the print out of results, i'm wondering if they really are 'Normal' as doctor insists.

So of course i'm no doctor, I don't know exactly how to read results, but i'm wondering if the following results are a bit off, despite being told they are 'normal'. I am in my early thirties.

This is the result and the printed text/range next to it.

'Ferritin serum: 7.1 ng/ml.

(Range for Pre-menopausal women 10-204 ng/ml.

Your ferritin is low and while it can be a marker of low iron stores, it is not as simple as that. There are other results that will be looked at along side your ferritin to interpret its significance.

I'd rather be a bit shit at numeracy than be a really rude dickhead like some of the people on this thread.
I'd be interested to know if they speak to people like that in real life, and if so, how that works out for them??

In principle you're right to investigate! I've had test results 'normal' then months later, a different GP has said things like' you have impaired kidney function' & iron, vit D levels etc etc were chronically low. Good luck op.

I think issues like this are gradually being pushed towards private sector as only viable option for us patients with health issues who need more than 4 mins, mine won't even talk to me about seriously full on Meno symptoms etc.

Yeah it isn’t the OPs job to interpret her blood results so stop being mean. It is however the doctors and they don’t appear to have done that properly. Her ferritin is low, I was prescribed iron when my ferritin was higher than that!

@calmearth agreed. I’m also not sure you don’t need to revisit some decimal place BBC bite size sessions.

@twentytwentyy1

If you can’t work out decimal places smaller than a whole number then think of them as fractions because some people find that easier to visualise.

Number on the left of the decimal point are whole numbers.

Numbers on the right are parts of a whole number.

So the first number to the right of the decimal point is how many tenths of a whole number .

The first and second numbers would be hundreds of a whole number

(And if you had them the first second and third numbers would be thousandths. And so on)

So 0.6 is 6/10

And 0.12 is 12/100

So 0.6 is a bigger number than 0.12 because it is a larger proportion of a whole number.

Your testosterone is normal but your ferritin isn't. Some countries have the lower end of the normal range at 50 and a lot of people don't feel great when their ferritin is below this level. In your shoes I would buy ferrous sulphate or ferrous fumarate from the pharmacy. It needs to be from a pharmacy, because the iron in multivitamins you can buy in the supermarket won't be strong enough.