This past fall was a rough time for me. I’m not going to go into details, but I was having a lot of problems in my family and personal life. There was, however, an event I was looking forward to: donating blood. I had been trying for several months to gain enough weight to be able to donate. My friends were plotting to force-feed me cheeseburgers until I outweighed them. I did not have to resort to that, but I really wanted to be able to donate when the blood people came to my school in October, so it was definitely a conscious effort. I figured I was healthy and therefore ought to do what I could to help those who were less healthy. I was wrong.
I’m not a fan of needles, so I wasn’t surprised when I started to feel faint even before they stuck me. The last thing I heard as I lost consciousness was “Oh, she’s a spurter!” I came to quickly only to fill a unit in 4 minutes, which is about 3 minutes too fast. I fainted again when they pulled the needle out, but as I sat on the floor in the corner munching cookies and slurping juice, I figured it was just the needles. For the second time, I was wrong.
For the next three weeks, I had horrible, skull-splitting headaches, every day, without fail. Due to various issues, as previously mentioned, my planned doctor visits were pushed back until fate decided I really needed to see someone. During church the Sunday of the fourth week of headaches, a woman fainted in the middle of the service. Unfortunately, I am a sympathy fainter. Luckily there are a number of doctors and nurses at my church, so while the woman who fainted initially had to be taken out on a stretcher by the ambulance drivers, much to her protest, I was simply given water and made to sit down for the rest of the day. The next morning I found myself in the doctor’s office, being diagnosed with anemia and being scolded for donating my blood when I couldn’t produce enough blood cells for myself, let alone donate any. I’d lost almost 10 pounds, which was more than I had gained in the first place.
I have an iron deficiency-caused anemia. My doctor said the solution was to eat a lot of protein to balance out the gratuitous amount of exercise I naturally encounter on a daily basis. This works, to a point. I gained the weight back, my cheeks no longer look like paper, and the headaches stopped, but every month is two steps forward, one step back. If you know what I mean…
How is this a food issue? Well, it drastically changed my diet. I had been eating what I thought was a balanced and healthy diet, fruits, vegetables, grains, light meats like poultry, occasional red meat, lots of beans and rice, and of course, obscene amounts of junk food. I now eat beef jerky, protein bars, nuts, and eggs in addition to many of those other foods; the ratios just shifted. Here’s the catch: if I stop eating these foods, my anemia rears its ugly head, and punches the inside of my brain. So when I had to have FES surgery and lost a lot of blood, slept for four days without eating much more than yogurt and a burrito, I got the headaches again.
What have I learned from this? The medical people are like vampires: they suck your blood and leave you anemic. Anemia is like a screaming baby in your head, only the screams are silent, and the only thing that shuts that baby up is a nice, juicy hamburger. Looks like my friends were right all along.
