Essential Thrombocytosis

I just started hydrea 1500 mg for this and aspirin.. read some where that it is considered a bone cancer.. illness since it affects the bone marrow... any views on this.. also ... anyone who has it please post more on this linda

I was diagnosed with ET over a year ago. I was on 1500 of hydrea for a few months but it knocked my counts down too long. I then went on a 1000/1500 dose on alternating days. The biggest problem I have with this drug is that it made my bones hurt. The bones in my feet ached like the dickens and my hands would swell up and go to sleep during the night. My platelets were ranging in the mid 500's on this dose. You really need to drink a lot of water when you take this drug and my kidneys would wake me up throbbing with pain so I have stopped taking it at night and now take it in the morning and drink a lot of water. Yes it does make me tired but not having bone pain is a lot better than being tired. I've also cut my dosage back to 1000 per day and take 375 mg ecotrim (aspirin). I'll see at my next appointment if my plateslets are too high.

Hi Linda, I also have the same as you,only diagonised 3months ago, where did you read that its bone cancer, I would like to read that also. tina05

I have been diagnosed with this since April of 2005 it is not a bone cancer of the bone marrow in no kind of way it is caused from a cell within the bone marrow that has went bad with no known reason it has reproduced all bad platelets and always will mine were in excess of 1.7 million platelets my doctor said he does not know why I have not had a heart attack or stroke before being diagnosed with it because of the high platelet count I dont know how much you know about this but the biggest worry is that the platelets will stick together and form blood clots to cause a heart attack or stroke lots of platelets cause yor blood to thicken you see it is not the blood itself that is thick it is the platelets that make it thick so you get hydrea or agrylin to kill off the platelets I took hydrea and 6 agrylin a day to kill mine now I take only agrylin 7 pills a day and they are still in the million range so I will find out in January if they have went down under the million range........ try asking more questions when you see your doctor it is not life threatning IF YOU TAKE YOUR MEDICATION WITHOUT IT YOU WILL HAVE A STROKE MORE THAN LIKELY.... you have to kill the platelets and keep killing them offf every day forever.

hi linda i have et as well. and i reading all these reviews. where does it say that it is some kind of bone cancer? my platelett count is 816,000 and i am not on any meds. my doctor says that i am to young.any one please reply colleen1109@yahoo.com

My mother was diagnosed with essential thrombocytosis (ET) in 1987. We live in Finland. Does someone know anything about this: What causes essential thrombocytosis? I have heard that one of the possible reasons (including some virus infection) might be the background radiation. Has anyone of you ever been thinking that it's possible that radiation (from background, nuclear power plants or nuclear disasters - like in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986) can cause ET? The contaminated cloud from Chernobyl came to Finland too. My mother has also worked in former Soviet Union when there were problems with nuclear power plants's radiation safety in the 70's. Does somebody know if ET is more common in countries where accidents has happened? I would be very pleased if someone answered to my questions!