Vitamin D Makes Me Happeee!

My dislike for winter had never been a secret. I hated it. The cold. The dirty snow covering everything in sight. The slush seeping through my shoes. The darker days. The cold.

I think, looking back now, that I experienced a touch of seasonal affective disorder. You know, where people get grumpy due to lack of sunlight. Of course, that is only a self-diagnosis...

But then my life changed.

Two years ago my then three-year-old son started getting sick. As in, every four to five weeks he was ill. From the late fall, through the entire winter, and into the early spring, that kid was sick with the flu, colds, and ear infections. It got to the point where I started keeping track of when he was sick in order to prove to myself that I was not exaggerating just how often he was ill.

Between washing sheets, filling up the humidifier, and buying more Tylenol I started wondering if my little boy's continuing illnesses were normal. I have always had a healthy imagination. My child being sick all the time made it easy for me to imagine that something else more sinister was at the root of all his problems. Did he have cancer? Was his constantly sick body eating itself out from the inside?  Did he have some other, lesser-known, incurable disease?

I do not know what took me so long, but I finally took him to the pediatrician. Before our scheuled appointment I underwent a great deal of internal soldiering. I was positive I was entering a future of expensive tests, hospitals, and difficult to pronounce prognoses. I told myself that I had nerves of steel, that whatever the doctor declared to be the matter with my little boy, I could and would be brave.

After she listened to me rant about his continual illnesses and gave him a thorough examination, the pediatrician made a anticlimactic, albeit simple, suggestion, "Why not try giving him extra Vitamin D?  Even in the summer most people in Utah are deficient."

When I left the doctor's office, I was not sure how I felt. Were all my fears unfounded? Or was that woman grossly inept at seeing what my little boy's true health problems were? I decided to try the Vitamin D thing.  I figured if it did not work I would just march back into her office and demand that she subject my child to a battery of tests. I would laugh at how simple she had assumed the solution was.

Except, I never had cause to return to her office because the Vitamin D worked.

I started giving it to him in the summer and never looked back. It helped my son so much I decided I would try it myself.  After a few months of taking it a miracle occurred: I didn't hate winter anymore!  The darkest, coldest, and most dismal day would come around and I would put my coat, boots, and genuine smile.

I still prefer the summer and all its extra sunshine and warmth. But I now live happily during the colder months as well.  My son rarely gets sick and we always make sure to never run out of Vitamin D.