| Imagine feeling so exhausted that, even just sitting | | | | exhausted and sleeping or chewing peoples' heads |
| and being was an effort. Supposing it did not matter | | | | off. By this time I am getting pretty worried. As you |
| how much sleep you had had, as soon as you tried | | | | might imagine, all sorts of self diagnosis has been |
| to do something your energy was drained like a | | | | done and I am suffering from a range of things from |
| badly worn battery on its last legs. Or, if you did | | | | yuppie flu to some rare, yet to be discovered and |
| manage to achieve the smallest thing, you then | | | | named illness and I am going to make medical history. |
| found you had to sit and rest because you were so | | | | Go back to the doctors to be told not glandular |
| physically drained and, worse still that you would | | | | fever; he appears to scratch his head when I say |
| wake up, anything up to three hours later because of | | | | there is no improvement in my symptoms and as |
| the energy that you had used. | | | | much as I try the mind over matter thing, my body |
| Worrying? You bet. What an earth was wrong with | | | | really is not keen to work. I am now pretty |
| me? So you go to the doctor and he does the usual, | | | | depressed, do not do being ill especially if I cannot |
| it is a virus thing. Keep your fluids up, take | | | | put a name to it. |
| paracetamol give it ten days and if you do not feel | | | | Oh goody, more blood taken (sure it was an armful, |
| any better come back and see me. | | | | felt like it anyway!) it is sent off for more tests. By |
| Just to add insult to injury, you found yourself | | | | this time I really could not have cared what was |
| permanently cold and unable to warm up with hands | | | | happening to it. Cannot handle the not knowing and |
| like blocks of ice, fingers like icicles and feet that you | | | | am frustrated beyond belief and feel pathetic. What |
| could not feel even if you were wearing a couple of | | | | if I have to spend the rest of my life like this? |
| pairs of socks. Major sense of humour failure, | | | | Blood results come back, guess what? You are |
| especially in the summer, not normal to be feeling like | | | | suffering from a vitamin B12 deficiency. What? What |
| Frosty the snowman. | | | | an earth does that mean? Well you are not absorbing |
| Well, what do you know? I do all of those things and | | | | B 12 from your diet and as a result you feel like you |
| nothing has changed. In fact, I was then suffering | | | | do; exhausted, short of breath, irritable and feeling |
| from shortness of breath, great, a non smoker, keep | | | | the cold. |
| fit freak and now I can barely go up a couple of | | | | Ok, now what? Well in the short term, lucky me |
| stairs without feeling 1. Shattered 2. In need of | | | | more needles! Three shots of B12 in the upper arm |
| oxygen on an industrial level and grumpy and irritable | | | | (thank goodness) one a week for three weeks to |
| like I have never ever been! | | | | bring my B12 levels back up to within normal range |
| I go back to the Doctors who, either thinks that I | | | | which should be somewhere between 200-700 and I |
| am a middle aged woman with hypochondriac | | | | am at a lowly 99, no wonder I feel grim apparently. |
| tendencies or, maybe there is more to it and perhaps | | | | From this point I now have to undergo further tests |
| further investigation is required. The word glandular | | | | including an endoscopy which proves inconclusive. The |
| fever is mentioned and he does the vampire bit and | | | | reason for my lack of absorption of B12 has not |
| takes blood. Am told will take ten days for the | | | | been discovered but, all that can be said with any |
| results to come back and then we will have | | | | conviction is that once every three months I have to |
| something to go on will either confirm it or more | | | | get another shot of B12 to keep the hibernating |
| tests, hmmm. | | | | squirrel with a bad attitude at bay and that these will |
| In the mean time ten days drags, well passes for me | | | | have to continue until the day I die. |
| like a hibernating squirrel because most of it is spent | | | | |