u/driule

donated blood three times last year, roughly every 3-4 months. felt fine after each one, passed the hemoglobin check no problem.

then got a routine blood panel and saw ferritin at 18. hadn't been checking it between donations at all.

the weird part - hemoglobin was totally normal the whole time. ferritin was the only thing showing what was going on underneath.

took about 4 months supplementing to get back above 50. now i test ferritin before every donation and track it over time so i can actually see the trend.

anyone else had it tank like this? how long did recovery take?

also curious - what do you guys use to track lab results over time? spreadsheet, some app, anything? im building my personal biomarker tracking system now