once i correct this vitamin d deficiency, it's over for you hoes

a reminder to always listen to your body

at the end of december, i started feeling very…doom-y. and by that, i mean i had a sudden, ongoing, low-level feeling of dread with no apparent cause, which obviously was not a great way to feel between christmas and new year’s eve, nor a great way to feel in general! i was a few days from my monthly visitor, though, so i chalked it up to that, as i’m prone to PMS symptoms that sometimes veer into PMDD. indeed, a few days into my period and within a matter of moments as i was picking up my NYE takeout, like a switch flipped, i felt the proverbial cloud lift and i went on my merry, happy-go-lucky way (this well-documented phenomenon is equally fascinating to me and also deserves a post at some point). i was back, baby!

but a couple weeks later, the doom came back, too. and then it just…didn’t really dissipate. the day it started, i felt so mentally rotten, i can’t even describe it, and it’s truly difficult to understand unless you’ve experienced it. my overarching sentiment was “everything is awful, everything has always been awful, and everything will always be awful.” a total 180 from my normal, sunny disposition.

had i suddenly been dumped into perimenopause? what was going on? i was endlessly ruminating on past experiences i’d never given a second thought, spiraling about all sorts of small non-issues, anxious about absolutely everything, totally unable to focus. and worst of all, i was uninterested in my normal, silly pop culture stuff that i love to talk about and think about and consume. completely indifferent (i had heard the word “anhedonia” before, but had never been able to relate to it in the slightest until this occurred!). i felt like i was in constant fight or flight, constant crisis mode without a cause. i’d be on a work zoom call and out of nowhere, that dread would just engulf me for a few minutes. it wasn’t quiiite a panic attack in the classic hyperventilation sense, but more like a creepy tsunami of unease and profound ickiness. then it would pass. and on it went.

meanwhile, my body was physically going haywire, too. my muscles were twitching. my hands and feet were “buzzing” and tingling. my ears were ringing. i was…itchy? my digestive system was running amok, to put it lightly, and i’ll spare you the details of that. i would wake up in a panic at 5 or 6am without any reason to.

i kept going back to hormones, because it reminded me of a similarly awful and dark time in my life more than a decade ago when i came off of the birth control pill and mine were all screwed up for months — i was waking up with anxiety in the same way most days, felt hopeless and depressed for no reason, and also had my very first panic attack out of the blue when i was feeding a friend’s cat while she was away for thanksgiving. but i also kept going back to another time, about 5 years ago — when i found out i was iron deficient — because i was also dealing with muscle twitching, tingling, weeeird and uncharacteristic anxiety/that sense of impending doom, and just a general, pervasive, and very strong sense of not feeling like my happy-go-lucky, carefree, sparkly self. so i went to the doctor to have my iron checked and it was perfect (as i expected, because i’ve been supplementing since then to keep it at normal levels). i guess it’s just…hormones? i thought again.

i’d have some ooookay and sorta-almost-good days in between the bad ones, but the way i described it to my doctor was that “my highs aren’t as high as my normal ones, and my lows are waaay, waaay lower.” it wasn’t improving, and i couldn’t go on like this! in the meantime, i went to key west (which is hilarious in retrospect because that still did not help), during which time i passed out in my hotel room after a shower — something that hadn’t happened to me since college when i’d get hypoglycemic attacks. great, another potential mystery symptom to toss into the mix!

just call me dr. kim

fast forward to a few weeks ago, when i was once again desperately googling in an attempt to figure out what the hell was going on with me. and god bless these women, because this was what pushed me to go back to my doctor and ask for my vitamin d to be tested, because i never had checked it before, and it wasn’t out of the question that i could be deficient in the thick of the new england winter.

sure enough, all the blood tests came back perfect except my vitamin d: a 16ng/ml (the bare minimum is 30). aha! i was so grateful i at least had an answer to why i felt like i was losing my ever-loving mind. i also immediately thought back to last june, when i was having all-over + eye twitches for a few weeks and had a similarly emotionally turbulent menstrual cycle that leveled out not too long after — prooobably not a coincidence that i was getting enough sun at that time to keep the deficiency at bay.

i’ve been supplementing with a lowish dose of vitamin d for just under three weeks now, and to be honest, while many of the physical symptoms have improved, i’m still not back to my old self yet mentally. it can take a while to get your levels back up (the brilliant dminder app has me at 27…progress!), so i’m trying to be patient, and taking it day by day. and today, i didn’t have any waves of anxiety or dread, so i will take it. and yes, when the sun’s out, i’ve been standing out on my deck in a t-shirt in 40-degree weather like a wackadoodle, trying to soak up those rays as much as i can. i can’t wait to look back at this time — like i look back at the pill time, and the iron time — as just a weird, bad blip that i’ve mostly forgotten about. on that note, one of my favorite little internet things is the solidarity and camaraderie you develop with strangers on reddit who are going through the same experience as you while you’re seeking reassurance and hope that things will improve.

but all of this is to say: listen to your body and advocate for yourself! so many people have dealt with a deficiency like this for YEARS because doctors didn’t think to run simple blood tests, and instead pushed antidepressants (absolutely good when needed, but sometimes it’s just a nutritional deficiency!) or dismissed them as having run-of-the-mill anxiety. you know you better than anyone.

i guess i’ll catch y’all on the beach this summer?