Vitamin deficiency. Never imagined myself having this problem.
The first signs of it was pain in my right cheek. Desperate to track down the source, I resorted to playing dentist. Gingerly, I tapped all my teeth. Nada. Nothing. Depression hovered close by.
Googling the symptoms (hey! can you blame me?) only conjured up darker visions of bleeding gums, plunging me into a hellhole of depression. Which was how I came to be sitting in the dentist’s chair on a Friday afternoon. Nada. Again.
“Does the pain keep you up at night?” asked the patient dentist. Me – shake head vigoriously.
“Nothing wrong with your teeth,” declared my friendly dentist after a spell under the glaring spotlight. Which was good and bad.
So what was wrong with me. Turn to Google againlah!
Fortunately, something propelled me to use new search words. “tingling pain” and “cheek”. By the way, did you know that people with “tingling pain” in “cheek buttocks” like to talk about it online? *Shudder*
Back to my story. Seems I had overlooked other symptoms. A tongue that itched occasionally, pain that went right up to the bone beneath my eye (which I had thought was odd), depression (thot I was menopausal for a minute – which brought on more depression), jolts of pain/tingling in hand, fatigue, pronounced breathing problems, etc.
Silly me had also totally ignored the fact that I had turned vegetarian just three weeks beforehand. And not bothered to increase intake of dairy products. Plus no eggs for a week as I had toyed the idea of giving that up to.
Which all lead to a deficiency in Vitamin B12.
Yes, yes, it’s dangerous to turn to Dr. Google. However, in this case, it helped.
I learnt how vegetarians suffer from lack of B12 and what happens when you don’t top up on it. The hard way.
Ironically enough, I had been feeling pretty smug, assuming I had covered all my nutrient needs. Made sure my diet has a variety of different coloured fruits and vegetables, soya, grains, etc. Darn it!
Converting from being a four day per week vegetarian to a 24/7 vegetarian was supposed to be a cinch. Didn’t recall other vegetarian friends having this problem so naturally wasn’t prepared for it.
Now, I’m going to have to do some serious reading up on being a vegetarian. Let me know if you have some good leads, well u?
