My Iron Was "Normal." So Why Was I Asleep on the Couch at 3pm?

It took me two years and one blood test nobody ran to find out. If you're tired in a way naps don't fix, this is the story I needed two years ago.

By Dana Merritt · About a 5 minute read

I want to tell you about the two years I spent being told everything was fine.

I wasn't sick. That's what made it so hard to explain. I was just tired in a way that stopped making sense. I'd sleep eight hours and wake up like I'd slept three. By mid afternoon I was bargaining with myself about where I could sit down.

I did the responsible things. I fixed my sleep. I walked. I ate the spinach. I went to my doctor, twice, and both times the labs came back with the word I started to hate: normal.

The second time, I cried in the parking lot. Not because something was wrong. Because apparently nothing was, and I was this tired anyway.

The test nobody ran the first time

Here's the part I didn't know. It took me two years to hear it.

The standard blood panel checks your iron. It does not always check your ferritin, which is the iron your body has in storage. They are different numbers. Mine turned out to be different in the worst way: iron in the normal range, ferritin scraping the bottom of it.

"Low normal," the report called it. Low normal, exhausted anyway.

If any of this sounds like your last appointment, ask for a ferritin test by name. It is a checkbox for the lab. Mine took two years because I didn't know to ask.

The part I don't like admitting

Finding the number was supposed to be the happy ending. It was actually where the embarrassing part starts.

Because I'd already tried iron. More than once. There were the pills that turned my stomach into a fist by 10am, and the ones with all the rules: empty stomach, no coffee for hours, nowhere near calcium. I'd start strong, wobble by week two, and stop.

I used to think that was a me problem. Two years and a lot of reading later, I think the truth is simpler and kinder than that.

The ad I almost scrolled past

I found CAVAÉ the way I find everything I'm embarrassed about: a Facebook ad at 1am.

The ad was for an iron that isn't a pill, a thin strip that melts on your tongue. Nineteen milligrams, it said, right up front where you couldn't miss it. My first reaction was here we go.

So I did what I do now, ever since the tiredness made me careful. I read everything I could find before I spent a dime.

It's a young brand. The review score is 4.8, from 230 reviews, and they show the 230 right where you can see it. Nobody made it sound bigger than it is. I went looking for proof beyond that, before-and-after labs from real customers, and came up empty. What I found instead was the founder saying, in her own words, that she does not have them to show me.

I've been burned by supplements that promised everything. This one was telling me what it didn't have. That, more than anything, is why I kept reading.

There was one more thing. A 60-day promise, written in plain English: if it's not working out, you tell them within 60 days of your order and they take care of you. I read the terms before I bought. They are short. I'd tell you to do the same.

See what it costs, plainly →

What taking it is actually like

The tin showed up that week. It's small and black, and it fits in the cabinet door where the pill bottles used to go.

The strip itself is thin, reddish brown, about the size of a postage stamp. It goes on your tongue and melts in about half a minute. The taste is raspberry first, with something earthy under it. I won't oversell it: I liked it by day three, not day one.

There is no water and no rulebook about food or coffee or calcium. And there's no staring down a capsule with your stomach already negotiating.

I took it with coffee the first morning, standing at the counter, and then I did something I have never once done with iron: I took it the next day too. And the day after.

The only number I'll give you

Thirty. That's how many strips come in a tin, and that's how many I took, on thirty days in a row. It's the first tin of iron I've ever finished.

I know what you want me to say next. You want the part where I tell you my ferritin number tripled and I run marathons now.

I am not going to do that, and it's not because the story goes badly. It's because I don't trust pages that do. One woman's number proves nothing about yours, and CAVAÉ, to their credit, never offered me a wall of miracle labs in the first place.

I can give you the part I'm sure of. No new bottle joined the ones I'd quit. My retest is on the calendar, about three months from the day I started, because that's when a second number means something. And for the first time since this whole thing began, the plan does not depend on me white-knuckling it.

Who I'd tell to skip this

Let me save some of you the click.

If your ferritin came back seriously low and you feel awful, this is not your rescue. See your doctor. If she says infusion, take the infusion. A strip is for the long stretch that comes after, the part where I always used to quit.

If a big pill never bothered you and you don't skip days, keep going. You are not who this was built for.

And if you don't know your ferritin number at all, get the test before you buy anybody's iron, theirs too. That's the same advice the founder gives, which tells you most of what you need to know about her.

If it's your turn to check

Everything sits on one page: what it costs, the three bundle options, the promise, and the questions I had before buying, answered without spin. There's no subscription trap. You buy it once.

If your version of my story is still missing its second blood test, start there. And if you've already got a number that won't move, well. This is the first thing I've finished.

See what it costs, plainly