Hello everyone, it’s been a while since I wrote and a lot has happened. I’m working on blogging a little bit more and one of the things most recent on my heart and mind is chronic illnesses. I recently took a tip to Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota, where I was diagnosed with POTS and Autonomic Dysfunction. This wasn’t a huge surprise for me because I had been diagnosed with POTS by a doctor in Michigan, but he wasn’t sure and wasn’t familiar with the condition so we were referred to Mayo Clinic. Six months after that first diagnosis we took the ferry across the lake and I was diagnosed with POTS and Autonomic Dysfunction. Chronic illnesses are very common, whether its POTS or anything else, you may not know someone has it. POTS kids don’t wear casts or look sick in any way. We might look tired a lot or we might have to sit down more often, but other than that, there is nothing that looks seriously wrong with us.
So here I’m going to give you a little background info on my diagnosis, and if you’re anything like me this stuff is actually interesting, for those of you that are like, I really don’t care about the statistics, then you can probably just skim this paragraph. First off, from all the doctors I’ve been to see, we have heard many times that POTS usually occurs in caucasian teenage females who are often high achievers. I was 14 when all of my symptoms started. Every POTS kid is different, there is usually a different “trigger” event and different symptoms. My first symptom was nausea, I was constantly nauseated from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. My “trigger” event was a bad case of food poisoning, in which I threw up all night long, had fever, chills, I was terribly sick. After you have something like that you usually go back to being able to eat normally by the second week. I have never been the same since. The second symptom I experienced was this chronic fatigue. I had no energy, I wasn’t able to walk long distances, I got winded going up stairs at school, I just kept getting more and more out of shape. This started the summer of 2013. My next symptoms over the next two years were a chronic headache (that I still have to this day) and syncope, which means I pass out and have low blood pressure. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was all related to POTS. Doctors couldn’t figure it out, I was misdiagnosed a million times it felt like before we came to the conclusion of POTS. What POTS actually stands for is Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It means that going from sitting or laying down to standing I pass out because my blood pressure drops instead of rises. This is where the Autonomic Dysfunction comes in. Not everyone with Autonomic Dysfunction has POTS, but everyone with POTS has Autonomic Dysfunction because Autonomic Dysfunction causes POTS. What this means essentially is that my autonomic nervous system is not functioning properly. Things I should be able to do automatically like digesting food, regulating blood flow, etc. doesn’t happen quite right in my body.
That’s all the info I will give right now, but if you want to know more about the illness, Click Here
What I’m going to be mostly focusing on right now for my blog is stuff surrounding my illness because I would like to spread awareness for any and all chronic illnesses like mine because they are often “invisible” illnesses that we just don’t know a whole lot about. My inspiration for this blog and my future blog posts was from this blog: https://lethargicsmiles.wordpress.com/ This woman is amazing and she has inspired me to write about my illness. I hope anyone fighting a chronic illness will see my blog or hers and be inspired like I was.
Until next time!
Bethany
Still enjoying this lovely weather, I felt great yesterday so we seized the day and took a trip!
Meds and Giggles 