Iron-ic

So I received a bundle of instructions in the mail from the hospital the other day, partly about my pre-op day coming up on Tuesday when I donate blood and get cleared for surgery, and also several pages about how different things like the hospital stay and the anaesthetic will be billed separately and that I'm responsible for all of it, insurance or no, and then also this:

IRON SUPPLEMENT BEFORE BLOOD DONATIONS: (Begin one week prior to first blood donation)

(meanwhile it came 5 days before donation day but anyway)

Iron Sulfate - 325 mg.
1 tab by mouth three times per day until the day of surgery (Begin one week before first blood donation)

I didn't know there were different kinds of iron to take, and I'm already all over the folic acid situation, but ok, I looked it up online and ferrous sulfate is often prescribed to anemics or pre-ops. Got it. I'm down.

So I found it at the drug store but wasn't really paying attention to the amount - I felt like I needed to start shoving it into my system post-haste since it was less than a week to donate-day. But when I looked at the bottle more closely I saw that the one I bought was 65mg 3 times a day. And if I was going to get 325mg 3 times a day, which seemed like an enormous amount given that ONE 65mg tablet is already over 300% of the RDA, I would have to take 15 iron tablets every day. That seemed totally out of whack and ridiculous. 3x65mg a day is already making me so drowsy. Every morning when I am yanked awake by my alarm I feel like I've been whacked upside the head with a baseball bat. Plus my dreams are getting nutty. Nuttier.

So I went to another drug store and found a different brand with this on the label:

65mg iron from 325mg ferrous sulfate

AHA! You can't outfox me, HSS, with your misleading instructions! I will not be outfoxed, foxy people! I am so not taking 15 iron tablets a day on top of the 11 vitamin pills I already swallow! Whaddya think about that!?!

I'm sure they think nothing. They are far too busy with more important things. I'm just trying to take care of my fellow pre-op peeps who may read this so they don't turn into Wolverine as I was sure I would if I took 15 iron tablets a day.