Cogito ergo scribo

贝 and i took the morning off on Monday to collect his second blood test result from Pathlab.



The findings showed that 贝's blood profile is consistent with alpha thalassaemia traits, which means it's highly probable that he has asymptomatic alpha thalassaemia.

This is a genetically acquired disorder that is passed down from parents to children. In 贝's case, it was from his mom dad. His brother has it too and his mom knew about it as well. Somehow, this wasn't conveyed to 贝 and his sister, which caused us to panic initially when we first saw the blood test result. I mean, after all, the term for this medical condition sounded so sophisticated that it was kinda scary.

Actually it wasn't something serious, well, at least not in 贝's case. To put it plainly, 贝's inherited mutated gene from his mom dad. This is a kind of disorder of the blood cells. The most severe case would result in stillborn or Hemoglobin H disease, which would only occur when both the parents have alpha thalassaemia. If only one of the parents has it (as in 贝's case), the children have 50% chance of inheriting the same but will never get the full-blown disease. The mild cases of alpha thalassaemia carriers don't have any symptoms and are no different from healthy people, except that some may have iron deficiency or mild anaemia.

Alpha thalassaemia is one of the most common genetic disorders in the world. There isn't much to be worried about unless the other half has it too and the couple intend to have kids. As 贝's sister-in-law doesn't have it, his nephew should be safe. As i don't have it, it shouldn't have much effect on our kids too. But then we don't intend to have any kids anyway, so it doesn't make any difference really.

After knowing the result, i did the research on the Web for the last two days to find out more about alpha thalassaemia. It was then i discovered how amazing human genes are when i read about the benefits of having this blood disorder. All living mechanism have the instinct of protecting the species from extinction. It was found that this genetic mutation of the blood cells may render a selective survival advantage for the carriers in protecting them against malaria. After i told 贝 about this, he said that he's an X-Man because he has mutated genes that are to his advantage.

So, i have an X-Man as my boyfriend. I wonder if i should be glad about it...

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