S/p gastric bypass with low ferritin

New to this forum so a brief intro...I'm 38 yr old female who is 3 yr post laproscopic RNY gastric bypass. NEVER had a problem with iron deficiency in my life so was not given iron supplementation after RNY surgery.

Ever since my surgery I take a multi-vitamin twice a day, B-Complex once a day, B-12 injections every week, Vitamin D 5000 iu's daily, Vitamin C 500 mg three times a day, and Calcium Citrate 1600 mg daily (divided).

Labs were good for 3 yrs...or so I thought!

My 3 yr labs showed a Ferritin of 5. Iron had dropped from 140 to 70 over 1 yr and CBC was all normal. I had been on a downward trend with the Ferritin but didn't notice it because the Ferritin always came back "normal" - I never compared it to the previous results and if I would have done that I could have caught it a lot sooner. But what's done is done and now I am trying to pull my Ferritin up.

I know the problem is because of my surgical malabsorption. I feel shitty, tired, irritable, am losing my hair, have aches and pains, and get headaches all the time.

I've been taking 60mg Carbonyl iron with Vitamin C and Proferrin (25 mg of heme iron) twice a day for about 5 weeks. Ferritin is now up to 8 - which is good that it's going in the right direction.

But someone please tell me when I'm going to start feeling better (whine, whine, whine)....!

rleepac