Reverb 10 prompt: Wisdom

The Reverb 10 prompt for December 10, 2010 comes from Susannah Conway, author of Unravelling

Prompt: Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

For Lois Kelly, learning how to do nothing was her wisest move in 2010.

Brooke Farmer realized this year that:

Conventional wisdom is mostly bullshit and will not make you happy. Or, at least, it won’t make me happy. So this year I having been making lot’s of bad decisions and I am, so far, very happy with the progress I’ve made.

Dev made a conscious choice to be more open-hearted in 2010.

Misswiz states that her wisest move was deciding that a long distance relationship was worth taking the plunge. (I heartily agree… although, in my case, I resisted quite a bit in the beginning!)

Rebecca found wisdom in following her heart.

Anna found wisdom in deciding to travel more.

Kelly posted her reply as a lovely collage of phrases from posts on her blog in 2010.

For me, enjoying the moment and following my heart have always come naturally, while taking care of myself often gets put on the back burner. So – after reading everyone else’s lofty aspirations – my wisest move of 2010 may seem rather prosaic. That said, the wisest thing I did this year was getting some thorough bloodwork done.

On the one hand, I’ve always been an energetic person. Friends and co-workers have often called me the Energizer Bunny. Still, I’ve also had mysterious bouts of fatigue for, oh, 20 years. The fatigue would last two or three days, and then I’d snap out of it. It was a very distinct feeling, though, and I had asked doctors about it over the years, but no one knew what to make of it.

Over time, however, the gap in between energy and fatigue was growing shorter and shorter, until finally, I was just plain zonked 24/7. Plus, more and more symptoms were piling on. Energizer who?

Long story short: My bloodwork came back and everything was great, except that I was super anemic.

Stupidly, though, I thought that anemia just made you a little tired. Didn’t realize it could also make your hair fall out, nails brittle, heart palpitate, have panic attacks, insomnia and find it really hard to concentrate, among other things. So, y’know, I simply did not connect the dots!

Now, after 6 months of taking iron and eating rusty nails on a regular basis all those symptoms are going away. Not as quickly as I’d like (it took a good 4 months before I felt any improvement), but – wow – I feel so much better!

I’ve always been pale-skinned, so I did not connect the dot there, either. But one day in September, I noticed that my skin had changed color. I went from one shade of pale to another, mind you, but the new shade of pale has much more pink to it. Next time I’m at the hardware store I’ll consult paint chips so I can be more accurate, as in, “Overnight, my skin went from Cherub Teeth to Polar Bear,” or whatever.

One problem is that when I feel energetic now, I get so excited that I overdo it and then feel like a zombie the next day. Several times, I’ve been so happy to have energy that I get insomnia thinking about everything I want to do with it. Luckily, that’s happening less and less now.

I wish I’d had my blood checked years ago, but at least I did it in 2010, which means I can look forward to an exuberant 2011. Not to mention that when I see a vampire film now, I know exactly how their victims feel!