Evidently I have an Iron Deficiency…

The past few months have consisted of sleep, more sleep, a little eating, talking about how tired I am, more sleep, and sometimes running, sometimes, but mostly sleeping. Notice a pattern here? My boyfriend definitely did, and he kept making comments about how tired I seemed, and was concerned that everything was okay.

I did not notice a pattern, assured him everything was okay, and then proceeded to take a nap (okay, okay, it probably wasn’t THAT bad). Still, I honestly didn’t think anything was wrong. I had just finished a semester of grad school where I took two classes for the first time, in addition to working full time, and one of those classes was on a Saturday morning. It’s only natural that I would be a little tired, especially after a stressful couple of weeks preparing for and taking finals. A little exhaustion now and then isn’t abnormal.

During the semester, I ran pretty regularly until the end when I would forgo running in the morning to sleep an extra hour. Again, though, that was easy to justify, I needed my sleep to do well in classes, and a few weeks off wouldn’t kill anything, but then it continued, and continued. Until, eventually I was a month out of classes, and I was still choosing to sleep an extra hour instead of running because I was so freaking exhausted!

I tried everything short of going to bed with my running shoes on and nothing worked. To be honest, I learned quickly that wouldn’t have worked either, after I came home from work one evening, put on all my running gear and shoes and then proceeded to collapse on my bed and wake up two or three hours later feeling incredibly groggy.

This says nothing of my appetite, which has been nonexistent. My lunches consisted of a little chicken, with a tomato and cucumber salad, and MAYBE if the thought of food didn’t disgust me I would eat dinner later. I knew I wasn’t getting enough calories, but I just wasn’t hungry. I figured, I’m not running as much so my body must not need as many calories, nothing unusual to see here!

Then I went to the doctor for my annual check-up and got my blood drawn. The next day I get a call that I have iron deficiency anemia and I need to start taking iron supplements. Did you know iron deficiency anemia can make you really, really tired? It can also make you lose your appetite, and make you feel weak, which may explain why I felt like I couldn’t run for as long or as fast as I used to be able to.

So I’m taking ferrous sulfate supplements once a day now. I finally got to a store to purchase them and have started them a couple days ago. Hopefully I’ll be less tired, and be able to get myself out of bed in the morning like I used to!

Have you ever experienced an iron deficiency? Did it make you as tired as I am?

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