BLOOD matters - Société Canadienne de l'Hémophilie
BLOOD matters - Société Canadienne de l'Hémophilie
BLOOD matters - Société Canadienne de l'Hémophilie
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CWOR<br />
Aging with Hemophilia*<br />
by Robert Dinsdale, Oakville ON<br />
*Please note that the opinions, beliefs and<br />
stories shared in this section belong to the<br />
author, and not to Hemophilia Ontario –<br />
Central West Ontario Region.<br />
I have been asked to write an article about aging with hemophilia, so I<br />
thought the best way to do this is to start with my history and how the actions<br />
of my youth impact me today.<br />
I am a clinically severe Factor IX hemophiliac. I was born in Toronto in<br />
1954 and grew up in a very different time from now in terms of the un<strong>de</strong>rstanding<br />
and treatment of hemophilia. The first indication of my bleeding<br />
disor<strong>de</strong>r was when I was two and had a bleed that led to my diagnosis. The<br />
first major impact of my being a hemophiliac was when I was eight years<br />
old; I was hit in the left eye by a badminton racquet while playing doubles at<br />
a family gathering. I began bleeding into the back of my eye—I believe it is<br />
called hyphema. It continued to bleed internally with no indication of stopping,<br />
and I went to The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto where they gave<br />
me unit after unit of plasma to try and get some clotting started. As a result,<br />
I pretty much spent my summer in the hospital that year and lost the sight<br />
in my left eye. The day I came home from the hospital is really my first clear<br />
childhood memory, and then of course going to school that September and<br />
having people look at me with what I now called my bad eye—the bleeding<br />
and damage had left me with one pretty colourful eye. It wasn’t until I was<br />
19 that technology and the <strong>de</strong>velopment of clotting factor allowed me to have<br />
my bad eye removed and an artificial one ma<strong>de</strong>.<br />
When I was young there wasn’t a specific treatment for hemophilia as we<br />
know it today. In fact, the only treatment was ice and rest, and if you were hospitalized<br />
you would be given fresh frozen plasma in the hope that the clotting<br />
factor in it would help stop the bleeding. So when you had a bleed you en<strong>de</strong>d<br />
Blood Matters Fall 2010 /21