Thank you, @Altras . A hematologist it is, then.
I just know that my own health took a nosedive about nine years ago, and a very large part of that involved terrible pain and some swelling in my joints–particularly my hands and arms. I wasn’t expecting that to change when I decided on a whim to see what being gluten-free was like, but within a few weeks it made an astonishing difference.
So I’m not thinking so much that the iron deficiency is causing his injuries (although with no medical expertise whatsoever I was thinking that injuries might need a good supply of iron/oxygen in order to heal), but the possibility that the deficiency is caused by Celiac or some kind of gluten sensitivity, which in turn might be contributing to the the pain and inability, is what I’m theorizing. And if those conditions are hereditary sometimes, he might well have gotten them from me. As I mentioned earlier, I’d been trying to get him tested for Celiac for quite some time before all this happened.
I’m less worried about the vitamin D; I’m just thinking that that deficiency might be related to malabsorption as well.