Lovely.

So all the information I've gathered, including the advice of a registered nurse at Telecare, says that I can look forward to feeling this way for at least a few weeks. If I was on high-dose iron supplements, I'd probably start to feel better in a few days, but it would still take months to get my full energy back, and for my body to form new blood cells that actually have enough access to iron.

So as much as I'm in tears thinking about going in to work today because walking from the living room to the kitchen 3 times (or, in the case of this morning, carrying a load of laundry from the bedroom to the kitchen) still leaves me feeling shaky, and I keep needing to nap in the afternoons just to keep going until the normal time I go to bed. I can't nap at work. I can't just leave early because I can't stay awake any longer.

Fuck. I just called in. I can't do much of anything today, let alone go to work. I'm not bleeding as much (double-dosing on the desogestrel seems to be slowing the bleeding down, though not stopping it completely, and the cyklokapron takes care of the rest), but I'm just too exhausted.

You know the thing that hurts the most, the thing I want to scream to my bosses about? I might not have let things get this bad if it wasn't for them. I've spent over a month now feeling like hell, having low energy levels, and I thought it was just because I'd gotten sick and then had no appetite for a bit, but there was no way I was going to go to a doctor to find out because I couldn't afford the time off work. They've made it clear (thanks in part to my family doctor, and possibly a misunderstanding of what he wrote on forms) that they don't think this will result in me having to miss time, which is why I'm now on my second write-up for my attendance issues. Instead of risking going to a doctor, I used vacation time to get a few days off so I could rest, and obviously it wasn't enough but I felt trapped between a rock and a hard place. I was sick. I was going to feel tired. What else could I do?

And on Thursday, when I was in that much pain and bleeding that heavily, I was in tears for almost 3 hours at work, debating whether or not I could risk leaving. It took my bleeding through all my clothes to finally make the decision (gross though it is, when you bleed through the highest absorbancy tampon and 2 layers of clothes in 10 minutes, you know there's a problem), but I was still in tears when I told my sup I'd have to go home, and told him flat-out that part of the reason I was so upset was because I felt like I was risking my job by going home.

If work hadn't put me under such close scrutiny, hadn't gotten me in trouble for being sick, I might have actually deemed it a better choice to miss a day of work and gone to a doctor to ask, "Is this normal?" Instead, I pushed myself. I pushed myself really hard. My stats have dropped. I was tired all the time even before the massive bleed last week. I kept pushing myself because I wanted to prove to them that I wasn't slacking. To prove that I didn't just call in with every sniffle. I can work through being sick and tired, see? Look, I'm doing it right now!

I'm definitely going to ask my specialist if she can write something for work, to tell them what's going on and that year, sometimes I won't be able to make it in to work all the time if other circumstances get in the way. I'm not asking for leave. I'm asking for leniency. Understanding. Not firing me because I'm not as healthy as other people. Hopefully since she got the results of the blood test and knows just how anemic I am, she might be willing to do that.

Really, though, I'm mostly hoping she'll write me a note to excuse me from work from Thursday on. That will at least take care of the immediate work-related problem, even if not future problems.

Fuck, I really don't fancy the idea of spending even a few more days of feeling like this, let alone weeks or months...