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If I seem to be cantering down the road of health issues these past few weeks, it is because I have been talking to several sufferers who don’t seem to know what’s going on with them.
Of course I have no medical training, but I have had such a diverse range of experiences regarding the way my body malfunctions, that I feel compelled to share them from the perspective of the one feeling the feeling.
I certainly don’t claim to have solutions. What I have noticed (because I ask too many questions), is that people tend to dismiss symptoms because they don’t see connections.
A case in point: maybe 25 years ago, blood tests indicated that my haemoglobin count was very low, and further exploration revealed that I had minor thalassaemia, a hereditary condition. It was probably the reason I had been anaemic since I started menstruating.
The advice from my doctor was that I had to take iron supplements and eat the leafy green stuff. You’re young now, he’d said, but it could affect your bone marrow and you could develop osteoporosis as you get older. And that’s where I am now.
But let me tell you why I had gone to see him in the first place.
As an adult, I had moved house so many times that I became very efficient at it. Within 24 hours of moving into a space, everything would be unpacked and positioned exactly where I wanted them to be.
I would visit the new premises and mentally map out where things would go, and once the people brought in the stuff, I could point them to their new resting places.
As my books were my babies, I would transport them myself, many carloads of small cartons (because big is not better in this case), and unpacking them onto my shelves meant I could group them the way I wanted.
Anyway, on this occasion, I had moved into a place in St Augustine, and for the life of me I couldn’t get it together. Days passed and all I could do was get my daughter ready for school, drop her off and when I got back in, I would just fall asleep.
I felt tired all the time, my upper arms felt like the kind of burn you get from too much exercise.
I noticed that I had developed a very intense sensitivity to anything spicy. Although I am not a lover of peppery food, I enjoy a little heat. It had got so weird that even a hint of black pepper would have my eyes streaming.
The other thing was that my heels were cracking. Ugly gashes that sometimes bled.
The biggest change was my obsession with chewing ice. I didn’t care for food as much as I cared about chomping on ice cubes. I bought a special container (which I still have), so I could store extra ice.
I learned to take a glassful out of the freezer and let it stand for a little while on the counter, so it wouldn’t be quite so icy. It would get a little more porous, and that was it for me.
I think it irritated people to hear the crunching, but I couldn’t help it. I didn’t think there was anything unusual about any of these things. Until I learned about the dreadfully depleted state of my iron levels and my haemoglobin count.
It turns out that the ice addiction was a form of pica, called pagophagia, commonly caused by iron deficiency anaemia.
Unless you are medically trained, would you have connected any of these issues to that? The feeling of fatigue, the sensitive palate, the cracked heels, becoming the ice maiden… one root cause?
Things were pretty bad and for a few months, I was placed on double doses of iron supplements.
This came to mind because my daughter, who has always been anaemic, and for whom I have regularly got iron supplements, told me the other day that she had gone to the doctor and her iron levels were so low that she had been put on double doses of supplements for the next three months.
I asked if she had not been taking the iron tablets I’ve been buying her. In fact, just recently, noticing how wan she looked, I offered her some, and she said dismissively: “I have.”
Turns out she had, but she wasn’t taking them, except sometimes around her period. (Note well that one must observe the language, and learn to phrase the questions to avoid evasive answers.)
This is how I told her my story, my experience and the possible future complications, especially given the hereditary nature of thalassaemia. By sharing this with her, she is now a lot more conscientious; at least, I hope so.
When you’re young it’s easy to wrap yourself in the cloak of invincibility.
I was telling a friend about this, and she told me that she had had a similar experience recently. A blood test had shown that she was in a bad enough state that she too had to be given souped-up iron supplements.
I remember commenting to her a long time ago that she was displaying the symptoms of anaemia and iron deficiency and she should get it checked.
We tend to have diets that offer little nutritionally, but adding some leafy greens might go a long way.
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
