Keep an eye on the iron.
In an effort to stave off Postpartum Depression: The Sequel (the first was bad enough), I started writing. I found that humor was my best defense. Almost like the Boggart-banishing spell in Harry Potter. LA Style.
With a few keystrokes and a bowl of chocolate ice cream, I turned my irrational fear of germs into a blog post and the grief over my mother’s death into a little cyber-psychoanalysis.
(It’s not for nothing that I call myself Woody Allen with Girly Parts.)
And it worked. I managed to stay alive and even enjoy myself. But there are some things that are just too terrifying to vanquish completely. Almost too big to blog about.
For the past week, I’ve been in a fog and there is no funny way to say this: Little Homie has (very) low hemoglobin, and I am scared. All the hummus and kebabs and Bamba in the world are not boosting his levels, and so, each night per doctor’s orders, we’re giving him a spoonful of iron syrup that tastes like ass. Which he promptly vomits for obvious reasons.
“Give him another spoonful” B. says.
I google iron poisoning and cry.
So that’s the bad news. The kid is anemic and our doctor ordered more tests to make sure that it’s only your basic, boring iron-deficiency anemia and not Something Else. And while I normally crave excitement and adventure, when it comes to the health of my family, “boring” sounds good to me.
Fortunately for us, the kibbutz is a community of people who actually really care, and the clinic staff have been bending over backwards to expedite the whole testing process for us–even when Little Homie freaked out during the last blood draw, and it was like Texas Chainsaw Massacre only in Hebrew, no one flinched. They got it done.
Yesterday, I called the pediatrician, and I’m happy to report that Little Homie’s tests are as boring as the Academy Awards when a Spielberg epic is nominated.
The results are in: Iron Deficiency Anemia. Plain and simple. We could have avoided this if we had given him iron drops, and while doctors here in Israel push that sort of thing, our pediatrician in the states said it wasn’t necessary. Talk about something not being iron clad.
So while we encouraged Little Homie to eat a balanced diet, he never got the prophylactic drops. (That sound you hear is me beating myself up.)
Anyway, normal iron levels range from 50-100. When the doctor asked me to guess how low Little Homie’s iron levels were, I jokingly said “10.”
Because 10 is ridiculously low. (I may have even laughed.)
“Eight.” The doctor said. (He didn’t laugh.)
So I suggest buying stock in McDonalds because we are going to be eating there a lot until Little Homie’s hemoglobin is out of the Casper The Friendly Ghost range.
And hopefully by then his cholesterol won’t be off the charts.
