4 liters of blood

2021

Today I found out I have 4 more liters of blood in my body than I did 3 months ago! Exciting. I discovered around then that I have iron-deficiency anemia. Oral iron supplementation has been helping it improve and I feel a lot better now. I'm not back to normal, so I still need to supplement to build up ferritin/iron stores, but eventually I will be there.

I feel a lot of us walk around in life without these "4 liters of blood," whatever they may be. Things we didn't realize we were missing, but which were dragging us down. For some it may be a constant cough or something that always hurts. So our baseline level of wellness is always lower than it could be. Some people get so used to feeling unwell, like always getting congested or needing to take a nap after a meal, that they think it’s normal.

What’s “normal” isn’t necessarily even healthy nowadays, with the way for example that recommended blood pressure levels have been changed. In the end we have to listen to ourselves and how we feel, and sometimes those test results do line up with how we feel (which for me, 3 months ago, was pretty unwell). I’m grateful for modern medical interventions, but they do have to be used with keen judgment too.