What is causing the anemia?

55-year-old man is admitted for chest pain.  When we see him the next day, he mostly complains of persistent abdominal pain.  He finds eating difficult because of nausea and some vomiting.  He denies diarrhea or constipation.  He does say that for three days he had black tarry stools during the previous week. A previous endoscopy was unremarkable. His labs: WBC 10.8 Hgb 9.6 Hct 30.7 Plt 316 MCV 86 RDW 16.8 Stool for occult blood was negative. Your job is to order lab tests, and predict results.  We tried to look at the peripheral smear, but at our hospital this is a major difficulty.  Pathology told our students it would take 24 hours to prepare a slide.  
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Tags: Attending Rounds Source Type: blogs