What is causing my chronic low fever, fatigue for 2.5 months?

[ahillhokie]

I'm a 39 year old (seemingly) healthy female, but have been having reoccurring low grade fevers, fatigue, and headaches for more than 2 months now. Once in a while, I have been dizzy as well. My doctor has done numerous blood tests, swabs, a chest x-ray, a head CT scan, and I'm scheduled for a CT scan of my abdomen in a few days. So far, my tests haven't shown anything, except my WBC is low (3.7 K/uL), my MCHC was slightly low, and my NRBC was high. My primary care doctor doesn't seem concerned, but has sent my information to an infectious disease specialist for analysis. The only thing she has mentioned to me is that she wants to conduct the CT f my abdomen to see if I have hidden cancer in that region. Cancer wasn't on my radar until she blurted this out. Has anyone diagnosed with cancer started off with similar symptoms?

[Ken_PA]

Hi, what your doc wants to do here is to rule out cancer, because whatever you have is mysterious. The probability of you having cancer is low but it has to be ruled out at this point anyway.

If you don't have some hidden (occult) infection, then you might have some immune system dysfunction - which sometimes takes a long time to diagnose.


Also, there's this: Your occasional dizziness might be from low oxygen to the brain. Your system can detect that and respond by rushing new, immature red blood cells into circulation. Those immature cells are the NRBCs.

Why do you have low oxygen? That's because of your low MCHC. Usually that'd be from low iron, or from some slow but steady internal blood loss (which can be in the abdomen). Low MCHC can also cause fatigue.


But low MCHC wouldn't explain the fever. So that argues against there being internal bleeding.