Ok be shocked, but this is exactly what my doctor said I should do.
Here's the story. Monday I was deferred from donating plasma for the 3rd time in a week. My iron has been low 3 times in a week's time and on the 3rd time you are handed a note, sent to the nurse's office and then deferred until you see a doctor to get a CBC (complete blood count). So on Tuesday (yesterday) I did that. I went to my doctor and he checked me over and laughed and said, "You know Michelle if you would just smoke a half a pack a day your iron numbers would stay right up where they are supposed to be." Can you believe that? Amazing, a doctor telling me to take up smoking. Crazy.
Of course he's kidding because there's so many other health risks with doing that. Plus I wouldn't do that anyway because EWE cancer sticks and garbage breath don't even appeal to me and then there's that Word of Wisdom thing I should obey.
Anyway so now I have to take 3 iron pills a day instead of the 2 I take anyway just to keep my iron levels up enough so I can donate plasma and get the $50 a week that pays the gas bill and helps with the enormous grocery bill. Then because iron pills make you constipated, you have to eat 2-3 prunes a day just to balance it all out. So now that I'm going from 2-3 iron pills a day I have to go from 4-6 prunes a day. This whole process is dumb. Any other ideas out there on keeping iron levels up? I'm already eating right and taking the iron pills daily and starting smoking obviously isn't an option.
Michelle
2 comments:
Michelle, it sounds like you are doing all that I would recommend--although, you are braver than I am. I have tried eating prunes and can't handle them. So gross. I take two fred flinstones a day (prenatal pills make me feel sick) and load up on water and fiber and exercise a lot. The only other thing I can recommend is to take a stool softener with your pills. Anyway, dad is going to freak out when he sees that I just wrote stool softener on the blog so I better go.
I dated a BYU cross country girl for a while and their team had "red meat" nights to help them all keep their iron levels up. Maybe you should eat more red meat!
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