Bob, thanks for your comment. I do worry about conceiving a boy; I guess there's a 50% chance of him inheriting any given one of these mutations, and one of them in particular is associated with a risk of newborn boys just hemorrhaging to death internally for no reason at all. This terrifies me. I do not want that to happen. But I do want to try to have kids. I'm not aware of other men or boys in my family with coagulation disorders, although I have an adolescent male cousin who had pass-out, fall-down low levels of ferritin some years ago.... for no discernible reason. No known bleeding problem though.

Thanks for sharing the link. To try to evaluate whether it was about intestinal absorption or not, I took sublingual tablets, which supposedly send a higher percentage of the iron straight to your bloodstream. I didn't absorb much on those, but I had fewer GI complaints. The problem is, whenever I supplement with iron, my weight starts to climb — and does not stop, even after I stop the iron, unless I take steps to arrest the issue. One GP suggested this was potentially about my microbiome being compromised by the iron, and how a messed-up microbiome impairs your metabolism. I guess the other possibility is that it's just so inflammatory that something gets thrown off-balance. In any event, given how quickly I lose the iron and how often I'd need to get injections, I'm worried about how VERY high doses of iron straight into my veins might affect the rest of my health. Keeping my fingers crossed that a hematologist will see me in the coming months... but in my city, an otherwise-healthy, non-pregnant patient is not a priority for a hematologist/oncologist. A genetics counselor would also be a great idea, but unfortunately this is something my health insurance wouldn't cover without a referral. :-/