My Earlobes Still Feel Fat

“Ting, ting,” my husband goofs as he taps my skin. “Do you feel strong from all that iron?” We have to make dorky jokes like this – otherwise we’ll go into a joint fugue state at the understanding of how much my anemia has upended our plans and drained my savings account (because ’murica). I wrote about this back in November , when I thought I just had to get some iron put directly into my blood and that would ‘fix me up for a year or two.’ Ah, my sweet summer child… Not only did the four IV infusions I did (to the tune of $900, for my part after insurance ) not make me feel better, but my next blood test showed my iron levels had dropped even further – I was at 3% saturation in January! All I could think to say when we got the results was “what happens when I get to 0%?” The next thought I had was “what the fuck is going on with my body?” After all, it made sense that I couldn’t absorb enough iron from my ironically super iron-rich diet –  I did have asurgeon rearrange