“There are other symptoms that I have, too, but I?m afraid I?ve bored you.”
No. Not at all. Fill us in.
The other symptoms that I had were slurred speech and confused speech. I have an extensive vocabulary but I began having to search for the words to communicate my thoughts. Also, I would forget what I have planned to do just the moment before. Before someone says, “that’s just old age, “ consider this, since many elderly people have a lack of b12, couldn’t their “old age” symptoms be really “lack of b12” symptoms? I was only 54 when this became apparent, not really elderly.
Another symptom was a vague, inconsistent, migrating abdominal pain. Nothing quite specific, sometimes a doc would find an area of infection around a kidney or my appendix and I was even told I have chronic appendicitis.
I was very tired. I would get up in the morning, get dressed, brush teeth and hair (or was that hairy teeth?) and be exhausted. Blood tests confirmed that I was anemic. The nurses suggested I wasn’t getting enough iron, but I was taking iron supplements with ascorbic acid. So, it wasn’t that.
As a guess, because I was in the jungle at the time with no diagnostic capability, I began loading on b12. Within a week’s time, I noticed the fuzzy headache began to diminish. It came back before the next dosage so I increased the dosage to until it totally disappeared. For about two weeks, I was injecting 2 mg. of b12 twice a day. I was able to taper off and steadied for about 6 months at 1mg twice a day and now I use just 1mg 2 - 4 times a week.
Problems I had at the beginning were caused by malaria. About six weeks into the treatment as my newest red blood cells matured, those slimy little parasites munched away on the fresh food. The anemia returned, of course. I continued b12 and treated malaria, too. Two weeks later I had a different type of malaria. But it really put my fresh blood cells into a tail spin. Very anemic, very tired. Treated that, but it basically put me back at the beginning of my b12. Those parasites love the fresh blood the b12 helped create!
One nurse there was very well-trained here in the US and US protocols. She didn’t want to give me the loading doses. So, instead of tracking down someone and talking them into it, which took about 45 minutes, I got on the ‘net, watched some videos and began doing it myself. HA! FWIW, when the nurse found that out, she wasn’t at all happy.
If all goes well, I’ll be heading back to the jungle this summer and I should be able to replenish my supplies then. I’ll be there for a year before I come back to the US. I hoe.