July 31, 2010

tired little girl

A while back Allen found an integrated health care practitioner and sent me to go see him. He looked at my eyes and studied my posture and had me fill out this exhaustive questionnaire and agreed that I probably had some blood sugar/thyroid/hormone imbalance. Then he sent me to have this massive blood panel done (9 vials, and I really don't like getting labs drawn), and I waited for him to sit down with the numbers and figure out what's wrong with me.

Iron deficiency.

Last thing in the pharmacopoeia I would have suspected. I cook with cast iron, eat red meat, use green vegetables, etc. Nope, not on the radar. Thyroid is a touch sluggish, but all the hormones are firing away like normal. Blood sugar is good. I just don't have enough iron in my system. Having learned that though, it explains a lot. Looking at the list of symptoms was like reading about my life for the past year. So he's got me on some supplements to try and straighten all this out, and hopefully I'll start feeling better in the next couple months.

It's also good to know that often when I didn't feel good I wasn't just lazy and not wanting to get stuff done. Doesn't help with the energy levels, but it does help with the guilt for not keeping my housekeeping up in the way I'd like.

1 comment:

rahraht said...

Ugh!!! I hate that, but isn't it nice to know what you're dealing with? I had issues with my health for 6mos before I finally got a diagnosis. The problem didn't go away immediately, but at least I wasn't wasting energy trying to figure out what the problem was. Hope you start feeling better!