A little over a year ago I began treatment for B12 anemia, aka pernicious or megaloblastic anemia. At beginning I saw many substantial improvements, especially with fatigue. At the time I even stated that it had stopped my crashes, but that wasn’t true. The seemingly random crashes went from regular to rare. If I don’t push myself too hard I may not see an anemia attack for weeks, but with the return of the summer heat combined with my morning power walks, I’ve had a few more attacks than I’m used to. The most recent attack happened yesterday, triggering a full flareup.
During my lunch break I climbed up on the roof to work on patching it before the rainy season. The weather was nice with a good breeze, so I didn’t experience overheating like I did last time I was up there. I was able to get my work accomplished in about 30 minutes and came down feeling decent. A couple of hours later I was at a doctor appointment and informed her of my morning power walk and the roof work that day. She commented on how energetic and perky I seemed, to which I responded that while I was feeling good at that time, I could feel my body starting to get weak. A couple of hours later, at dinner, I took all my supplements, including extra B12 to help fight the attack, but before I knew it, I was chilled and passing out.
I’m not exactly sure how to describe the feeling of the anemia attack. My body starts to feel off, motor controls may be okay, but everything feels heavy and tired, but usually not painful. As the attack worsens muscles get weaker and I start to feel a chill, not long after this my eyes get heavy and hard to keep open. Bad attacks, like yesterday evening’s, are rare, but they can trigger painful fibro flareups. When the flare began I could still get around the house and was planning on cooking an easy dinner, but the pain started to get worse making it hard for me to use my right hand/arm for anything. The pain kept on worsening, evolving from simple aches to more powerful pain spikes throughout my legs and arms, and extreme stiffness in my shoulders. That’s when I turn the intensity of my Quell up as much as I can handle.
With the Quell turned up as much as it can, I’ll start to huddle under blankets, trying to warm myself from this increasing chill. The blankets help, keeping breezes off me, as even a gentle warm breeze may trigger shaking. At this point the pain may be bad, but is usually manageable and I’ll pass out. This is what happened last night. As the air conditioner blew cool air throughout the house, I covered myself with blankets, turned the Quell up, and passed out for an hour.
Upon waking back up I will often find myself warm, unless it’s a particularly bad incident. Yesterday’s was one of these bad ones. Waking up was a struggle, I would pass back out for seconds then re-awaken. The chill had lessened, but I still chilled easily. My head felt like it was in a balloon and my muscles were hard to move. Took over a half hour before I could move from the couch without assistance (it’s why I keep crutches around the house). Once I was able to move, I could feel my body tiring again, but it was after 8pm and I was good enough to get ready for bed. I knew it was bad when I couldn’t get a new trash bag into the trash barrel, I gave up after a few tries.
Thanks to, what doctors and research tells me is the fibro, I barely slept for the first 5-6 hours in bed. I feel asleep for good around 4am waking up shortly before 8am. I felt meh when I woke up, I was still in a flareup. Shoulder muscles were stiff, walking wasn’t easy, and motor skills were definite reduced. I tried to put a trash bag in the trash barrel, then gave up. I wasn’t surprised when I had a second attack after lunch today, I didn’t try to stop it, I let myself pass out. I woke up an hour later and was able to resume work.
Even though I get foggy during some of these attacks, only the worst stop me from being able to work. It is far easier for me to type out a string of bash commands or code a routine than it is to come up with words during conversations. Even right now as I type this blog entry, if I try to talk to someone else in the room my speech is slow, my mind easily blanks, and I forget words. One of the reasons I was happy to go into software engineering was because it is easier for me to code than to hold conversations. I’m fortunate to have a career that I can maintain throughout these health issues.
I would be happier if these anemia attacks completely stopped, but they may not, it’s possible that there can be permanent damage. I used to experience anemia attacks like this when I was an undergrad 15+ years ago, rare but they would occur. I experienced them periodically throughout my 20s, maybe one a month. When the fibro became strong I started experiencing them weekly, the B12 treatments stopped that until recently. I’ve been told it can take a year to fully recover from anemia, even longer or never especially if there was any nerve damage. It’s time to double check my anemia treatment, get my blood tested again, make sure none of my other vitamins have gone wonky.