My husband is Thal minor. he has never been tested, but his sister is a Thal major. First I want to clarify...does that mean my husband must be a Thal minor? Is it possible to be a non Thal with a Thal major sibling?
So...we have two sons. My oldest son has had an iron issue since he was a baby. He was breast fed and I have always fed hima maticulously clean and healthy diet. I have been careful to pair iron rich foods with vit c rich foods to improve iron absorption and to avoid calcium rich foods in the same meal to avoid the calcium blocking the iron. Still he had low hemocratic (sp?) tests and I was told to supplement him. In 2010, he had an actual ferritin iron test which came back normal...like 32 I believe. This past March, he had another 'iron' test, really just the hemocrit thing again and they kind of freaked out at the pedi office and wanted him to supplement with 90 mg iron per day. He is 5 years old, 40 pounds.
We are supposed to get his blood rechecked in July, but then my husband showed me this site and after reading, I have a fear that we have done something horribly wrong?
So my question is now that he has taken these megadoses of iron the past few months, what is the likely hood that he is now damaging his organs? When does this kind of supplementation cause irreversible damage? He had a blood draw yesterday and I took the info about the different iron tests with me to make sure they do the right test. We go back tomorrow for the results. I want to be prepared with solid info. When I look at his test results, what kind of numbers should I see and what kind of numbers might indicate that we have done harm? I am really upset. As much as I try to do everything right by my son, I feel like I have failed him in this by not doing more Thal research before allowing him to take these huge iron doses. My husband gave me the impression that being a Thal minor was not really any different than being a non Thal other than you would have to consider parenthood more carefully and do genetic screening first.