I had a passion for chewing ice. I had no idea that was a symptom.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about my life and those who came before me. My Grandfather died at 69 of an aneurysm while being treated for pneumonia. When he entered the hospital he expected to leave through the front door. As my Uncle Buddy, family star and not yet 40, coughed himself to sleep no one suspected his exit was imminent. By the time I was ten my father’s family was down three members. But then we had a nice, long stretch before we’d lose the next one. But it wasn’t without health issues.

My father developed a crippling stomach ulcer in the late 70s, wasting away to nearly 80 pounds. On night I visited he’d vomit all night long into grocery bags. His illness permeated my soul and the open way in which he suffered, head in his hands after each heaving fit, burned my eyes and nose. But in one of those odd twists of timing, his ulcer episode occurred just before the revolution in ulcer care determined you only needed antibiotics to control ulcers. 

I never saw my childhood as one filled with clues toward my later health. Everyone seemed fine to my ten year old self. When I was young I remember having stomach pains but those were explained as a response to the divorce. So I grew up plagued only by seasonal allergies. I graduated high school, went to work in a factory, got married, got divorced, and ended up in a college tucked away among rolling peaks of western North Carolina.

When you’re young you eat what you want, drink what you want, take whatever drug you want because nothing hurts you when you’re young.  College fills you with a sense of certainty of your views. The decisions I made in college set the stage for my later struggles, but no one ever knows that going in. I stopped eating meat. I got active, hiking trails and running with my future wife. By the time we left those hills my health attitudes were based on a pre-Google world. The best ideas and beliefs on health came primarily from word of mouth or popular health periodicals.

As I entered my professional life this concept of health permeated my way of being. My habits and resolve waxed and waned, as they do for everyone. But most years I considered myself the epitome of health, running 10k races, lifting weights and taking daily walks. We enjoyed a vegetarian lifestyle in a world where meatless products abounded.

Then my hair fell out in 2010. I mean all of it. That story is well documented here. Chalking it up to autoimmune disease I shouldered my new pack and trudged into my new normal. But a slow progression of issues dragged me down. I battled tendinitis for two years, unknown infections in 2016 lasting over a month, severe nightly leg cramps, and a bout with h. pylori, the evil ulcer demon. That one shook me a bit once I understood the role they played in ulcers. But no heart problems. And no early dementia, my father’s killer. So even with my shoulder pain and my hair loss I counted myself lucky and simply plugged away at life.

In the end it was the leg cramps and the mountain that woke me.

For much of 2017 I’d wake to agonizing pain cutting deeply into calf tissue. Wrenching myself awake with a throaty scream, I’d clutch impotently at my calves and twist in agony until the spasm faded. My wife always reached for me and made sure I didn’t hurt anyone. As I trembled in the aftermath, shaking with ragged breaths and covered in sweat, she’d soothe my fears and we’d fall back asleep.

Internet searches clued me into the chance this was related to iron levels. As I dug deeper it became obvious what my problem was. The clues lay all around me. A three year love affair with chewing crushed ice quickly went from a pleasure to a right cut to the jaw. Turns out it’s a sign of anemia, an iron deficiency condition. Leg cramps too. Looking over years of blood work it wasn’t a slam dunk. You have to take specific tests for something like this and quite frankly it didn’t seem necessary. I found my problem and it had a simple fix; take an iron supplement.

And by god it worked. Mostly.

By October 2017 the cramps were gone. A full night of sleep made worlds of difference in my mood too. And then a miracle happened. Tiny eyebrow hairs appeared. That may seem unimportant to you, but considering by this time I only had a thin, nearly white mustache left to show there’d ever been a hair on my body, I was stoked. Could I dream of a full head of hair again? More searches showed the role iron played in hair growth which only served to encourage me to declare victory.  So we packed up and headed to North Carolina for a hike and a campus tour for my son. And while the trip seemed like a disaster it got me thinking something deeper was wrong.

And it only got worse from there.