This is for anyone who deals with chronic health issues. Let my dumbass, lack of self-awareness be a lesson to us all.

It’s long, grab a beverage…

About six weeks ago, I went into a mad rush of getting a host of work deadlines completed before I needed to take almost a week off because Hubby was going to have a total knee replacement surgery. For the first week, he was going to need a lot of care. I thought I was prepared for what that meant. I was NOT.

By the time his surgery rocked round, I was pretty fried. But the deadlines got done, and everything that needed doing and needed delivering was all tied up in a nice bow for my authors. I won't bore you with the details.

Then came the post-surgery full-time nurse (I joke that there was no cute uniform to go with it), and back to full-time work. Juggling the two was no joke because yes, more deadlines. This is publishing, we are a very deadline driven industry. And if I'm being honest, while not completely missing deadlines, I was a little late on delivering some things.

By the end of the second week after Hubby's surgery, I was kaput. And feeling very crispy around the edges. I'd been sprinting non-stop and attempting to hold up the sky. Note to self: I am neither Atlas nor Hercules. But I pressed on.

I started feeling kind of "off" about the middle of last week. This week has been kind of a wash. If you read my recap, I did get a fair bit done, but not with my usual zest and I felt like I was dragging myself through mud. I struggled to get out of bed, and I'd resorted to working from my bed desk to get work done because making it to my office was beyond me.

I got quiet and wasn't as engaged with my authors who are probably used to me checking in more frequently than I did. Then last night, while chatting with Hubby, I told him how I felt and how much I was dragging. And he asked me a very important question: When was the last time you had a B12 shot? Fortunately, I keep track of all my appointments in my calendar, and the last time (I checked) was October 2025.

I have chronic depleted B12. Have had since about two decades ago. A result of diabetes and a few other things. About a month ago, my doctor switched up my meds for my diabetes, liver treatment, etc., etc. One of the side effects of all that is my ability to absorb B12 is almost non-existent and I hadn't had a B12 shot in 7 months.

Also fortunately, I had a appointment with my doctor (he's fantastic and very preventive) for our annual flu and covid shots. I talked to him about the B12 and he asked if I wanted to get tested for my B12 levels first and wait for the results. I said no since I was already pretty sure what the problem was. When I took the time to stop and think about it, I had all the classic symptoms of chronic depleted B12 which masquerades as (for me):

Muscle Soreness & Tension: My neck, shoulders, and back pain weren't just from stress; they were peripheral neuropathy. The nerves were sending send constant, low-level pain signals because they were damaged/irritated.

TMJ Flare-ups: Low B12 increased my facial nerve sensitivity, making jaw tension feel much more acute and harder to treat with standard injections. I thought my recent jaw injections weren't working. (They were!)

Tingling or Numbness: I was starting to get this in the hands or feet (paresthesia), which felt like "pins and needles." I thought my usual "too much time at my office desk" symptoms were back.

Balance & Coordination: I was getting very clumsy and was bumping into furniture or feeling slightly "off-kilter" (proprioception issues). There has been some very stupid, clumsy, coordination mistakes.

The "Pseudo-Depression": I thought I was starting to slip into beign slightly depressed, because I felt flat, unmotivated, and lethargic. It looks like depression, but it’s actually a chemical inability to produce "reward" hormones.

Anxiety & Irritability: My "fuse" was becoming incredibly short. Things that are usually manageable (like my current workload which I normally wouldn't even blink at) suddenly felt insurmountable.

Brain Fog: I started to have difficulty concentrating, word-finding issues, and that "buzzing" feeling where you can't quite focus on the task at hand. Work seemed to be taking me longer to get done, and that bugged the heck out of me.

Memory Lapses: My short term memory was fried and I was forgetting small things. That was not fun. I would stop mid-sentence because I couldn't remember what I was going to say. If someone interrupted me in the middle of a thought, that effectively killed my ability to complete a sentence. I blamed it on menopause and laughed it off. Don't do that.

Chronic Fatigue: No amount of sleep was fixing this because the "fuel" (oxygen) wasn't reaching my cells effectively. B12 is essential for creating red blood cells to create oxygen, if you didn't know, so low B12 = low oxygen.

Hypertension (High Blood Pressure): I could actually feel this happening to me. High homocysteine levels (caused by low B12) stress the arterial walls and force the heart to pump harder. I thought it was stress and made myself roll with it.

Headaches/Migraines: I had vascular stress and nerve irritation in the neck which caused chronic tension headaches. Again, I thought it was my jaw injections malfunctioning.

And finally, low B12 can cause malabsorption due to the lining of the stomach getting inflamed (atrophic gastritis), and making me even less able to absorb the B12 from food, making the depletion worse.

That coupled with a loss of appetite and nausea, I would have the munchies late at night, but in reality it was my brain screaming for energy while my stomach was physically struggling with the ability to process actual food. I thought it was just my usual diabetes and liver condition triggering my digestive issues. It was not.

I thought it was just stress or “menopause brain,” but the reality was a biological system failure. I'm taking a week at a beach house to reset before Hubby’s next knee surgery in a month’s time, but I'm also writing a deeper dive into how this chemical “brain death” nearly killed my productivity and creative process. More on that soon.