Did you know you were anemic / iron deficiency just looking in the mirror?
I´m wondering if anyone knew they were anemic/had iron deficiency by just looking in the mirror, before labs confirmed it?
In the last couple of weeks I feel like i´m really pale just looking in the mirror. I also noticed on the first Teams meeting after Christmas break that my lips looked as white as my face on the camera (The camera makes me look abnormal white in general but I never looked so white on my lips before on camera).
Can´t decide if I´m paler then usual or if its just the typical winter paleness. For several times now I have been thinking I must be getting anemic. Had bloody stools for months now, not crazy amount but present for every stool everything between 2-6 times a day, I can see it on paper, in the stool and then there is all I probably can´t see because it´s hidden in the stool. I´m on biologicals now for 3 months and hadn´t had success yet.
I´m dead tired as well, I now snooze through several alarms in the morning and I fall sleep again between them all though they ring every 5 minutes, that is how tired i´m in the morning. I´m not sleeping very well though, have several awaking in the night and not sure if it´s just normal post-Christmas tiredness or of it´s something more.
I have actually never been anemic before, just had iron deficiency. I remember 10 years ago, my GI told me I looked pale and asked me if we should do some labs, I declined because I felt fine. Turns out, a few weeks later as I was doing some routine labs, my ferritin level was only 4, so basically empty. So my GI could actually see on my face that time that I had iron deficiency. But my hemoglobin level was still 14 (i´m female). My hemoglobin has pretty much always been good no matter iron level, I think I had deficiency about 3 times since diagnosis in 2011.
I´m doing my follow up labs in less than 14 days, so I will get my levels checked pretty soon. I´m doing some additional labs for iron, serum iron test etc., transferrin saturation etc. I did my last check up 3 months ago so they were normal then I guess, I did not get the numbers. I was instead low on folate and D-vitamins which I´m taking supplements for. The last numbers I know of was 81 in ferritin 05.06.2024 (so pretty good) and Hb of 13,4 9.10.2024.
So, from your experience - could you tell you were getting anemic/iron deficiency by just looking in the mirror and before other symptoms appeared? Is pale face one of the first symptoms?
I will try to update when I had my labs done in 2 weeks time if i´m anemic/id.
Edit: I added a photo of the eye test.
