Aplastic Anemia

My Encounter with Aplastic Anemia

In 2007, when I was 25 years old, I started to get winded going up a flight of stairs. I also began having two hour long nosebleeds, and I knew something was wrong. I had my bloodwork checked and shortly after my doctor told me to go to the hospital right away because my blood counts were extremely low. I had no idea what that meant at the time, and wasn’t overly alarmed.

Katherine Calvo, MD, PhD

Institution
National Institutes of Health
Physician Status
accepting new patients
Primary Disease Area of Focus
Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML)
Aplastic Anemia
About
Dr. Katherine Calvo is a hematopathologist and researcher in the Hematology Section Clinical Center’s Department of Laboratory Medicine at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Calvo graduated from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and completed a fellowship and residency at National Institutes of Health. In collaboration with Dr. Steven Holland in the National Institute for Allergy and Infection Diseases and Dr. Neal Young from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, they have developed a method for identifying patients with a high likelihood of having GATA2

I'm Like You: Briana Donis

Homecoming queen and top student Briana Donis always wanted to go to the University of Texas at Austin.
“I was having a pretty awesome year.  I was very well known at school and I had a boyfriend.”  She had just been accepted at the school of her choice when she noticed how really tired she was all the time. And then the bleeding started.

My Life is Making a Difference

Beginning September 2012, I just wasn’t feeling quite right. I was increasingly fatigued and there were some perplexing bleeding incidents, as well. After many months I experienced partial vision – just little areas of vision that were blank. Internal bleeding in the eyes was causing this, and my eye doctor knew it was serious and even thought it could be leukemia.

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