I wonder if he was constantly taking iron. I went through a streak of donation and started feeling terrible. I got a complete iron panel done (amongst other stuff) and my ferritin was something like 20.
They check hemoglobin levels before donation in the US, but they don’t check ferritin (it’s a less commonly run test in general). You can have symptoms from iron deficiency before your deficiency is reflected in your hemoglobin level, and a ferritin test will pick that up, but a quick hemoglobin screen won’t.
Yes, this is exactly what happened to me. My hemoglobin was always in range (albeit lower, but the screeners had no problems passing me along) however my ferritin was crashed.
