My ferritin was 14 the day my doctor told me I was fine.
Before any of this, I was a runner. Not a fast one. But I never skipped. Five mornings a week, out the door before anyone in my house was awake. Same roads. Same hills. That hour was the part of the day I got to keep. Everything else belonged to somebody.
Then it crept up on me. My easy runs stopped feeling easy. My legs felt like concrete by the second mile. I was walking hills I used to fly up. And I blamed myself. I'm getting older. I'm not sleeping. I've let myself go. So I trained harder, and I got worse.
I know what tired from training feels like. This wasn't that.
By two in the afternoon I was reading the same email over and over. There was hair in the shower drain. I was out of breath on my own stairs. I kept finding a separate excuse for each one. Finally I went in. They ran my labs. My ferritin was 14. And my doctor looked right at that number and told me I was in the normal range.
Then she asked if I might be depressed.
I sat in the car and read that lab sheet three times. I thought I'd leave with an explanation. I left wondering how to explain myself better.
What you're supposed to do.
I went back. I pushed. Iron became part of the plan, and I thought, good. This is something I can do.
The first pills made me sick every morning. Then I tried the gentle ones. And this part is embarrassing. I'd skip a day because my stomach hurt. Then two. Then I'd find the bottle weeks later in the back of the drawer, half full.
I had a whole drawer of half-empty iron bottles. I bought every one of them thinking, this time, I'm going to finish it.
Nobody quits iron because she's lazy. She quits because every dose costs her something.
That's the part I wish people understood. Every bottle in that drawer was bought with good intentions. And then taking it became something I negotiated with myself about every single morning.
That drawer is where CAVAÉ came from.
