Iron will

When I and my siblings were growing up, our mom was fixated for a while on our getting enough iron. Calcium was not a problem: She had milk for that. Fluoride was provided in our tap water. We ate oranges with gusto, so Vitamin C was not on her worry list. But iron? There was something to fret about. The last thing she needed was five little wan, anemic kids. My mom was canny. She knew that policing a multivitamin into her kids every day was not going to work. No, the iron problem would have to be solved by means of a carefully managed diet. She started sneaking spinach into soups and salads. She tucked an individual-serving-size box of raisins into every brown bag lunch we toted to school. She tried getting us to drink milk that had molasses stirred in (we hated it and flatly refused). She made liver and onions at least every other week. I can't think of a meal that is more designed to repel children than liver and onions. But my dad loved it. And on liver-and-onion night, as on every other night, it was either eat what was served or go hungry. We had wolverine appetites so going hungry was not an option. We'd drown the liver in ketchup and choke the mess down. All my mother's toiling on the iron front came to mind the other day when one of my lab results came back with a low ferritin level, again. Abysmally low. Hemoglobin is down, too, though not as alarmingly. I've been chasing after the ferritin for a while now, trying to coax it back within normal range. But It's remained at 9 instead of the minimum 22, and I imagine it thumbing its nose at me from the depths. Add to this injury the insult of either wacky hormones or a side-effect of the low iron (or both): never-ending visit from Auntie Flo. Now I have the attention of two doctors, both of whom want to run more tests to be sure nothing sinister is going on. Overnight I've turned from someone my insurance company makes money on to the dreaded "high utilizer." So, I'm scheduling appointments and going back to a carefully managed, iron-rich diet. I drink nettle tea, eat my spinach, take iron tablets, munch on raisins. I'm even considering cooking up some liver. Pass the ketchup.