Anonymous wrote:
- a lot of brain fog and difficulty concentrating.
- a hard time finding words and tend to get overwhelmed by conversation.
- more frequent infections
- have an anemia that has required multiple iron infusions a couple of times a year.
- had low grade fevers.
- I think I’m coming down with something, feel tired and achy. Then they go away and the cycle repeats a few weeks later.
- had that again except now my body really hurts, my neck/shoulder are hurting all the time. I have this weird chest pain in the area right below my neck and down to nipple line that just feels like my chest is cold. It’s the same pain as if your hands are too cold for too long.
- I have a constant ringing in my ear and now my mouth has a reddened/swollen are near my gums that I’ve also seen before but thought maybe it was brushing related. It hurts.
(Sorry for reformatting - was having trouble parsing the wall of text (short attention span over here).
IANAD but from the first batch, it sounds autoimmune (we have Hashimoto's thyroiditis and celiac in the family. Either of those can account for the brain fog, achiness, and ringing in the ear (tinnitis) due to the general inflammation/feeling crappy that can accompany uncontrolled autoimmune conditions; anemia can be caused by celiac (poor absorption).
Who diagnosed the anemia and ordered iron infusions? Did they do any further investigation, or was the diagnosis basically, "low iron? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ go get infused"?
If you go to urgent care, please consider asking them to run a full thyroid panel, a full celiac panel (not just TTG-IGA - a new study came out this week showing that it's not as on-target a measure as was previously thought), and similar for any other AI conditions that seem like possibilities.
If it were me, I'd be pushing the anemia-diagnoser to dig into *why* such anemia; if that was your PCP, then maybe polite persistence with the practice is the way to go. (Sure, maybe she went on leave early, but there are short-term resources they can engage to cover the gap rather than just throwing up their arms and telling patients they'll have to wait until the group is (somehow, miraculously) fully staffed again.