i was actually feeling relatively good before i left, leading me to believe that the six vials they took was far too much for me to deal with.
if i go to the hospital, what are they going to do? they're going to take another blood test, first. of course. maybe give me pills...
i get paid on saturday morning, i think. i'm going to want to do some groceries on saturday morning, if so. so, if i'm going to go, i should go early on saturday morning to try to catch them when they've got a few minutes.
so, what have i learned?
the basic problem is that i'm using more iron than i'm able to process. as a basic accounting process, as a conservation problem, i'm either losing too much too fast or not taking in enough, fast enough. and, i don't know which, yet.
have i always had iron this low or is this a new thing? see, i don't know. i'm sort of "cherry-picking" data. i wish i had information going back many years, so i could see if this is unusual or not.
the fact that i'm tired and have a headache is suggesting i've lost some blood, but i don't normally get my blood taken on regular intervals, either. i could very well be sick from the blood test, itself.
but, what can i conclude from what i've done so far?
- i do not appear to be eliminating blood in my stool. i may still be bleeding (perhaps in my brain), but i don't appear to be bleeding from my gut.
- if i'm not bleeding, either i can't absorb iron or i can't process it.
so, the first thing to test for is absorption. assuming absorption...
- i learned that eating meals with large amounts of elemental iron that are also high in calcium & phytates is not allowing me to increase my iron stores.
- i also learned that supplementing with small amounts of heme iron, regularly, and with vitamin c, on an empty stomach, is not enough to increase my iron stores.
- therefore, altering my diet on it's own cannot solve this problem - i need deeper medical intervention.
i'm absorbing everything else, including b9, calcium and d. i haven't been tested for a or e or k. that makes something like celiac unlikely, as the only thing i can't absorb is iron - i don't have a general absorption problem, i have a specific iron absorption problem.
and, if it was due to blocking from calcium or the phytates or the oxalates then the meat should have helped. it has not - the decrease is continuing.
so, if it's not my diet, i'm left with:
a) i have a genetic condition that is doing something like overproducing hepcidin.
b) i have something more serious like leukemia, and i'm not able to produce enough red blood cells due to that