Bariatric anemia

I wrote about the importance of supplements before. As a bari patient, you will take them for the rest of your life. No matter how much you eat, you will never eat enough to be able to eat enough vitamins and minerals your body needs. It is what it is. Take it with a pinch of salt. 

After the surgery, you will be taking only a multivitamin, in case your endocrinologist sees some more deficiencies based on your previous blood work, something more, tailored to your needs. But normally it is only the multivitamin. You are eating so little, that that you need to supplement everything. That is why. 

I had my first blood work after three months and surprise surprise, everything was wrong and I was prescribed tons of pills to add what was missing to the system. The majority of the problems went away pretty quickly, the pills helped and I was much better. The major problem was the iron.

No matter what I did, the levels didn’t want to go up. I was given a generic supplement for iron at the very beginning, but it didn’t do anything. Based on my next blood work, I was clearly anemic. Something that never happened to me in my whole life before. It seems like a little thing, but it isn’t. 

A lack of iron in your system makes your life miserable. I was exhausted all the time, with cold hands and feet, I felt so dizzy that only while getting up in the morning, I had to sit first, then wait a while, and only then stand up and even like this I was seeing floating colorful points in front of me. The same was true with getting up from a chair. It happened to me very often that I stood up and had to lean against the table/writing desk so that I didn’t fall. My overall energy was comparable to a half-dead rat. I was crawling around and hoping for a miracle. 

It seems funny to describe it, but I spent half a year like this. The first three months after the surgery I depleted all my vitamins, then after three months I was able to recover everything but the silly iron, I was given the first iron supplement, and after another three months and a new blood work stronger ones. So imagine what it was like for a person who is doing their best to keep functioning. Not much fun, to tell the truth. 

After 6 months they finally gave me pills that started to work. It was far from perfect, but still, I started to feel a little better. I was still anemic, but it was not as severe as before. All this time I was having very low blood pressure and blood sugar jumping up and down. It didn’t help my comfort either. 

I was barely making it all that time. Many times I thought it would be better to go to the hospital and have some iron IVs to sort this out. But as I didn’t want to interfere with the prescriptions my doctors gave me, I didn’t go. I should have. I was silly and this was a very unnecessary way of suffering. Most likely the IVs would have sorted that out and I would have felt much better.

Don’t make the same mistake as me. If you feel bad because of the lack of iron, have extra blood work, tell the doctors what surgery you had, and they will decide accordingly. They know what to do. One infusion will help you a lot and it won’t mess up anything your bari doctor gave you before. No need to suffer. 

My iron levels went reasonably up after a year. It took me forever to get out of anemia. Well, it depends. I am in and out. It depends on the period. Sometimes it is better, and sometimes I am somewhat under the limits. I keep taking the iron supplement. Every single day. I never skip. Supplements are something like brushing your teeth. It is a must. 

Right now I suspect I am most likely lower than I should be, I feel it, but it is nothing as bad as before. My next blood check is scheduled in a month, so let’s see what they will find.

This time I will act much faster if I see that things are not going well, I will go to the hospital and ask for help. I am giving it a week and if nothing, I am going. I don’t want to let it slip to a big deficit again because it will take a lot of time to go back to some reasonable numbers again. 

Take your vitamins, it is for your own good. This is very important 🙂