Doctor, Doctor… September 15, 2005
I didn’t feel up to fronting up for work again today, so I’ve toddled off back to the doctor and asked for some iron tablets. He tried to talk me into the tests, but I really don’t believe I’m bleeding internally, and I need to get a handle on this sooner, rather than later. So iron tablets I have.
While I can understand his need to cover the bases and so on, I think it’s a bit extreme to assume that a woman of child-bearing age who has low iron levels has an ulcer or a tumour or something else bleeding in her guts. Iron deficiency affects a huge number of people - women, men and, apparently, a lot of toddlers (because their needs are greater for growth) and it’s pretty much always related to diet. This means that if I’m iron deficient due to poor diet, there’s a reasonable chance that Mark & Finn are too, so we still have work to do.
I haven’t been back to the gym since last Tuesday. I’ve just been too tired and it’s felt like too much rushing about by the time I’ve got home from work, had dinner, spent time with the Foozle and see him off to bed to then turn around and dash off to the gym. They close at 8pm, so I need to get out of the house by about 7.15 to get there and do my circuit. Still, I will persevere. I figure I will give it until the start of Mark’s next teaching round (about 8 weeks) and, if I haven’t developed a habit of going regularly by then, I’ll cancel the membership.
Now I’m off to grab a cuppa and do some knitting.
Breakfast for me is usually accompanied by a big brown vitamin pill which includes a big dose of iron. I used to scoff at the things, but being mostly vegetarian sometimes makes it hard to keep those iron levels up and I was fading out by 3 o’clock every day. They seem to have helped (really or just pyschosomatically - who cares). Make sure you take your iron with a dose of vitamin C - tablet or juice - it helps your body absorb the iron.