JK, you don't want to be on my level. My levels are awful, which is why I now need to take two weeks off from training to see if that's part of the issue.
The most I can remember is taking the week off before a meet to let my body recover and make it less stressful to drop water weight. Although my training isn’t what it used to be, I still rarely take more than three days off in a row. Now I don’t have a choice.
My Rheumatologist requested that I go two weeks without training and get my levels re-tested. My bloodwork is still completely out of whack and they honestly still don’t know why. Here’s an example:
One of the biggest issues is my Creatinine Kinase levels. They’re at 681 when they shouldn’t be higher than 196. This is indicative of muscle injury. It could be from training heavy, it could be from the meds, or it could be from my autoimmune issues. Regardless of what’s causing it, they still shouldn’t be this high and I’m gradually losing muscle because of it.
My red and white blood cell count, hematocrit, and hemoglobin are also all low, which explains why my energy levels are low.
My Rheumatologist has been the only doctor who has consistently had me get bloodwork done to determine if the meds I’m on are working or causing any potential issues. Now she’s leaving to go to a teaching hospital. Perfect. She was afraid that my levels may show heart damage that could have been caused by the meds, thankfully other tests showed that this wasn’t the case.
This has been going on for over three years now and has become increasingly frustrating. You’d think they’d just be able to run my bloodwork through a computer to diagnose me and prescribe meds, but I guess it’s not so easy.
Hopefully I’ll still eventually get this figured out.