Board Thread:News and Announcements/@comment-31035787-20130227063609/@comment-4148373-20130309171918

@ Xasparaz

The medical crap? Oh, I've said it on here before. In addition to my ADHD, Insomnia, and Bipolar (all of which are pretty much under control, or at least as 'under control' as this stuff can be), around the end of Freshmen year in high-school, I got sick. And then, afterwards, my heart kept racing, and I kept needing to sit down after minor tasks like walking downstairs in my house. Even once I should have been over the original sickness, I wasn't in good shape. We mentioned the heart thing to the doctor we saw, and she didn't seem to think it was anything, but if we wanted, we could go to a cardiologist. Oddly enough, we knew one, since my brother had needed an incredibly minor, closed heart surgery (this was pretty safe, since he was like 7 or so and this was typically done on infants, so they had much larger veins to work through). We got lucky. It turns out I've got something called POTS. Basically, most people stand, there's an unconscious tightening of the leg muscles to prevent the blood from pooling in the legs, because of gravity. Someone with POTS either doesn't have that reflex, or it's weaker than it should be. This causes incredibly low blood pressure, which isn't good, as your brain doesn't get much oxygen. It's often triggered around 15-16, after getting sick with what I got. Not everybody has this happen, and it's unknown why getting sick triggers it, but it does. There are other reasons someone has it, and it's mostly found in females... but hey, apparently I'm one of the guys who gets it. Lucky me. Anyway, the doctor we went to actually happened to be an expert on POTS, to the point where I've met people who have traveled pretty far to see him. Anyway, on to the symptoms. Aside from increased heart-rate (because the heart must work harder to pump the blood out of the legs), often people with POTS faint. I don't. Never have, even after hours of walking around, after the medication I'm on for it has worn off. Mind you, I was generally limping, incredibly delirious, and apparently looking drunk after the walks, but I never fainted.

My heart-rate goes way too friggin' high (120-150 beats a minute), but there are other symptoms besides the heart rate. It intensified my insomnia (I was staying up until 3 AM just afterwards), majorly increased my senses of smell and touch, (to the point where certain smells made me incredibly nauseous, and I couldn't wear most shirts or clothes because they itched to an insane level), made my stomach touchy about what I ate (not throwing up levels, but acute nausea and stomach aches), and made me very heat and cold sensitive. All of these symptoms have improved, over the last 3-ish years, quite a bit in some cases, but they're annoying as heck. There are other effects, but none as noticeable as those.

Anyway, the medication I'm on for it helps immensely, but I need to take it every 2 hours, from 8-4. Now, at least where I live, the schools don't let you carry medication with you, it needs to be stored in the clinic. Which would have meant me having to leave the class every 2 hours, walk to the clinic, take the medicine, and walk back. This would make going to school annoying already, but, at least early on, I had quite a bit of trouble moving. The school didn't have any good solutions, so my family decided to home-school me. But I didn't have much energy, so we didn't do much. But I would get bored, and eventually, that boredom was what drove me to edit the wiki so much. I wouldn't have started this without the POTS, so I guess that cloud has a silver lining.