If you don’t already know, I had ridiculous anemia when Eva was in kindergarten, circa 2009. Luckily, we had already trained her to make a pot of coffee.

My stored ferritin was in the low single digits– I want to say if I was lucky it might have been a four. My menstrual cycle had always been heavy and at that particular time period, it had gone positively insane. My primary care provider at the time shrugged it off, which made me cry. And I remember sitting in the car, on my cell phone, crying to my husband, Darrell, who basically reminded me that I don’t usually take shit from anybody and I should direct my infamous temper at said medical provider.

One of the fun symptoms of anemia is that it gets worse in the hot sun. My problems started due to work stress wreaking havoc on my body in the spring. I (luckily) got fired from that job in March and the problem got diagnosed in the early summer. My daughter started afternoon kindergarten in late August. I would walk her the half-mile to school, and somehow walk home, and then back to retrieve her, and home again. But by the end of that last walk, I was so exhausted I would sit on the couch (and sometimes lay on the floor if I couldn’t make it to the couch) and wait for my five-year-old to make me a pot of coffee at 3:30 in the afternoon.

She would bring me the coffee. I would drink enough that I could stand up again and make it to the dining room table. Around 3:45 I would make my way to the dining room table, where she would refill my cup and do her homework until her father arrived hime at 4:40 p.m. On the days he found me sitting at the table drinking coffee, he would make dinner.

When my doctor showed no desire to investigate or improve my condition, I started the search for a new primary care physician (the one I am still with today). I had heard so many good things about this potential new doctor, and they turned to be true, because he had a three month waiting list for new patients. I really thought I would be dead in three months if the intense bleeding and the iron loss continued.

And then brilliance struck– I called my gynecologist. If anyone knew about issues from menstrual bleeding it should be my gynecologist. They heard my story and brought me in to see a nurse practitioner the very next morning.

When they saw the results of my blood test, my medical team asked how I was still walking around. The answer was adrenaline and stress.

The gynecologist’s office gave me a mountain of prescription Vitamin D and iron tablets. I started eating more cream of wheat, drinking nettle tea and getting more Vitamin C.

But my iron has never fully recovered. It’s at the highest it has been in a long time right now–31. Which is technically normal. But evidence shows that a level around 50-75 (and the higher end if you have problems like restless leg) is optimal. I heard that from my primary care physician and from one of my favorite doctors on Instagram (smilesandscrubs, her stored ferritin is 22 right now.)

I get my blood tested– for the third time in six months– next Saturday morning. My doctor wants the full iron workup, my A1C and my cholesterol.

My eating this week has been mediocre. And this weekend it got worse. I was down to 162, then yesterday I was 169, and now today I am a little under 168. Can I clean myself up?

I’ve been taking iron at least every other day, two vitamin D plus calcium tablets every morning, a multi as often as I can, and the occasional zinc.

Symptoms of anemia start a lot more basic than crippling exhaustion, although falling asleep in the middle of the day and not being able to stay awake despite buckets of caffeine does make it rather obvious. Other signs:

• brain fog
• mixing up/forgetting words
• pale/dull skin
• brittle nails/pale nail beds
• cold feet and hands
• racing heartbeat
• shortness of breath