I went to a new doctor for my POTS last Friday. I was so excited. She changed my medicine to the one my mom's friend had suggested and also prescribed me the medicine that Allyssa took. I was so hopeful that the new medicine would help me. I took it for the first time Friday night, and I didn't feel any different on Saturday. If anything, I felt slightly worse. My anxiety was completely out of control. I'm not sure if that was because of the medicine though, or because I was scared of possible side effects of the medicine. I took it again Saturday night, and I was completely miserable on Sunday. All day it felt like I was going to faint or like I was going to have a heart attack. Then, when Allyssa and I were getting ready to order food at dinner, my heart rate was crazy. It was incredibly slow, and then it would speed up very rapidly. It was so scary that I had Allyssa take me to Urgent Care. They did an EKG, gave me an IV, and did bloodwork, but by the time the IV was done my heart rate had completely stabilized. I don't know if it was because of the IV, or because of the Xanax I took before we left dinner. Either way, the Urgent Care doctor told me he assumed this reaction was because of the new medicine, and that I should not take it anymore and call my doctor first thing Monday morning. So that's exactly what I did. And I was bed-ridden yesterday, basically. My heart rate was totally out of control. At one point, I stood up to go to the bathroom, and my heart rate went through the roof, just from standing up. I actually got tunnel vision, like I was going to faint. It was terrifying. So I decided to go ahead and take my original medicine last night, just to keep me from being completely incapacitated today while waiting for my doctor to call me back and give me further instructions. When her nurse finally called me back this morning, her instructions completely blew my mind -- my doctor wants me to take MORE than I had originally been prescribed. I am terrified that I'm going to have a freaking heart attack in the night or something. Or that I'm going to be completely unable to move tomorrow. I really hope it's not like that, but I can't help to worry about it. Especially considering I'm going to most likely be alone tonight because Jessie is going to go out, and then she works tomorrow during the day. And of course, David's gone, which is a whole separate issue that I'd rather not address, because that just really stresses me out... I just wish I could go stay at a hospital and have them take care of me until my medication is stabilized. I hate not being able to get help except between the hours of 8 and 5... if I'm lucky.
THIS FUCKING SUCKS.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
some big girl thoughts
So I started a blog post on June 1 that I never finished because I didn't feel like it. It was basically just a list of things to bitch about. The things below that are in italics are from that blog post, and the regular font that follows is how I am feeling about those things now.
I feel like my parents don't want to spend any time with me.
Last weekend, I was going to go home and hang out with my mom. I told her that I had Sunday off the previous Tuesday, but she said they already had plans to go to the lake, so we couldn't hang out. I was really upset that they wouldn't change their plans to hang out with me, because they are always bitching that I never come home. It made me feel like they don't want to see me or hang out with me. It really hurt my feelings. But this weekend, I'm going to my parents' house and my mom and I are going to hang out on Saturday. So I feel a little better about that.
I am scared that David is going to leave me due to my POTS.
I still feel this way, but I'm trying really hard to be as normal as possible. I hope he can put up with me for as long as it takes to get over this. I'm finally feeling positive about the fact that I might get better, so I hope he can stick around long enough to see that.
I feel like my doctor isn't really listening to me.
I was very concerned about where to go next with my health, but then I talked to this girl Andrea that I met through a POTS forum on facebook, and she recommended her doctor to me. I have an appointment with her scheduled for this Friday, and I'm very excited and hopeful that she can help me. I just hope she listens to everything I have to say. But if she doesn't, I have somewhere else to turn as well. I talked to my primary physician yesterday and she said that if this doesn't work out, she knows of a great neurologist who might be able to help me.
I am totally unmotivated to look for a new job.
This is definitely still the case. I'm kind of worried, because I'm not making any money. But my mom wants to help me work on my resume this weekend, which is one of the things that has been holding me back from looking for a new job. So hopefully that will give me a little push in the right direction.
I feel like shit.
This is also still the case. But I have been learning that the more I move around during the day, and the less I lay around in bed, the better I feel. So I have been focusing on doing that, and it has seemed to help, at least for the last couple days. And now that I've realized I feel worse after I eat, I have been trying to eat smaller meals to keep me from feeling so crappy. It doesn't always work out that way, but at least I've been trying harder.
I am tired of being afraid of having a panic attack every five seconds.
I just have to keep reminding myself that many, many times I feel like I'm going to have a panic attack I don't. Plus it helps to know that I usually don't have panic attacks in public, so that is calming. And I am learning ways to cope with it, so that is also helpful.
I have realized that after I eat, my POTS gets worse... but I really really like to eat.
Like I said, I have just been trying to eat smaller meals, which seems to help. Hopefully it helps my weight too!
I wish I could meet people who are more like me.
I really wish I could meet other people who don't like to drink. I think I live in the wrong town for that. Everyone here wants to party all the time, and I just can't. So I really don't have anyone to hang out with. My friend Brie just moved back to Columbia though, and she isn't a big drinker anyway, so that is good. Plus she has a kid, so she can't really go out all the time either. That should help with my loneliness. I just wish people would realize that partying and drinking aren't the only things that can be fun. Maybe when I move away from a college town, that will change. Maybe I should quit being friends with newly-21-year-olds.
I am scared that I'm never going to be happy or healthy again.
This does scare me, a lot, but I was talking to my friend Kaitlin today whose roommate has POTS and she said that her roommate is starting to get better. Julie (the roommate) has had POTS for about two years, Kaitlin said, but she is starting to get better and hardly gets dizzy at all anymore. That gives me a lot of hope for my own health, except for the fact that she was diagnosed when she was a teenager (which leads to a better prognosis), and I didn't get sick until I was 22. I plan on asking the new doctor I'm seeing Friday what her honest opinion is of my prognosis. I hope it's positive, but more than that I hope she's just honest with me...
On another note, something I didn't mention in the post I started on June 1, I think I may have finally decided where to go next with my education. That sounds great, and I am very excited about it, but I'm still not 100% sure. When I was in high school, I was absolutely convinced I was going to be a lawyer, and then a judge. I started college as a political science major, but then I decided I didn't really like that. So I changed my major to biology, thinking I would work in a crime lab. By the time I graduated, I had absolutely no clue what I was going to do, but I knew I didn't want to work in a lab. I also know that I could NEVER go to medical school, because I just don't have the stomach for it. I love science. I really do. But lately people keep mentioning how good of a lawyer I would be, or how I should try out law school... and it has got me thinking in that direction again. So I looked into MU's law school. It looks like it might be pretty difficult to get into, but I seem to have a knack for taking tests, like the ACT, so I can't imagine the LSAT being much different. This is the first thing that has really interested me since I started thinking about my post-undergrad education. The only thing is that I couldn't get in until next August. Like 2012. So I started looking into grad school at MU to see what my options were, and I came across an HDFS and Law dual degree in Family Law, and that REALLY interests me. I would really like to speak with an adviser or something in the HDFS department, and ask some questions about what Family Law entails. I would like to learn about what I could do with that degree. Plus I would like to know if I could start taking HDFS classes before applying to law school to get a head start on the whole process. But the degree will take four years. If I don't start until August 2012, I won't graduate with my JD and MS until I am 28 years old. That scares me, for a few reasons. (1) I am going to miss science. I may not want to work in a lab, but I still love science, and I am going to miss learning about it when I'm getting a social science-type degree. (2) I wasn't very good at college. I am scared that four more years is going to really drive me nuts. (3) The JD program at MU is full-time day classes, so I still won't be able to get a big kid job, because I will have to be working nights. Which really saddens me. (4) If I don't graduate until I'm 28, I will be kind of old (in my personal opinion) to be starting a family. And I really want to do that. Not now, but I don't want to be doing it when I'm 28. But I also don't want to be going to law school and trying to raise a family at the same time. This is the scariest part of this whole thing. If I had graduated from college when I was 21, like I should have, and then went on to get a JD and MS, I would only be 26 when I graduated, if I took a year off, and that would be a much better time to start a family... But I don't really want to get a JD just to turn around and have to take a year off from work for pregnancy and baby-raising. I'm just so concerned about my future, something I've never really thought about until now... It's just scary. I just want to make the right decisions. I wish I had more time in my 20s...
I think I just need to see a career counselor. I am really leaning toward this Family Law idea, but if I find something I could do in the field of science that I am also interested in I might do that instead. I think I will make that a goal for this next week -- see a career counselor... I will let you know how that goes...
I feel like my parents don't want to spend any time with me.
Last weekend, I was going to go home and hang out with my mom. I told her that I had Sunday off the previous Tuesday, but she said they already had plans to go to the lake, so we couldn't hang out. I was really upset that they wouldn't change their plans to hang out with me, because they are always bitching that I never come home. It made me feel like they don't want to see me or hang out with me. It really hurt my feelings. But this weekend, I'm going to my parents' house and my mom and I are going to hang out on Saturday. So I feel a little better about that.
I am scared that David is going to leave me due to my POTS.
I still feel this way, but I'm trying really hard to be as normal as possible. I hope he can put up with me for as long as it takes to get over this. I'm finally feeling positive about the fact that I might get better, so I hope he can stick around long enough to see that.
I feel like my doctor isn't really listening to me.
I was very concerned about where to go next with my health, but then I talked to this girl Andrea that I met through a POTS forum on facebook, and she recommended her doctor to me. I have an appointment with her scheduled for this Friday, and I'm very excited and hopeful that she can help me. I just hope she listens to everything I have to say. But if she doesn't, I have somewhere else to turn as well. I talked to my primary physician yesterday and she said that if this doesn't work out, she knows of a great neurologist who might be able to help me.
I am totally unmotivated to look for a new job.
This is definitely still the case. I'm kind of worried, because I'm not making any money. But my mom wants to help me work on my resume this weekend, which is one of the things that has been holding me back from looking for a new job. So hopefully that will give me a little push in the right direction.
I feel like shit.
This is also still the case. But I have been learning that the more I move around during the day, and the less I lay around in bed, the better I feel. So I have been focusing on doing that, and it has seemed to help, at least for the last couple days. And now that I've realized I feel worse after I eat, I have been trying to eat smaller meals to keep me from feeling so crappy. It doesn't always work out that way, but at least I've been trying harder.
I am tired of being afraid of having a panic attack every five seconds.
I just have to keep reminding myself that many, many times I feel like I'm going to have a panic attack I don't. Plus it helps to know that I usually don't have panic attacks in public, so that is calming. And I am learning ways to cope with it, so that is also helpful.
I have realized that after I eat, my POTS gets worse... but I really really like to eat.
Like I said, I have just been trying to eat smaller meals, which seems to help. Hopefully it helps my weight too!
I wish I could meet people who are more like me.
I really wish I could meet other people who don't like to drink. I think I live in the wrong town for that. Everyone here wants to party all the time, and I just can't. So I really don't have anyone to hang out with. My friend Brie just moved back to Columbia though, and she isn't a big drinker anyway, so that is good. Plus she has a kid, so she can't really go out all the time either. That should help with my loneliness. I just wish people would realize that partying and drinking aren't the only things that can be fun. Maybe when I move away from a college town, that will change. Maybe I should quit being friends with newly-21-year-olds.
I am scared that I'm never going to be happy or healthy again.
This does scare me, a lot, but I was talking to my friend Kaitlin today whose roommate has POTS and she said that her roommate is starting to get better. Julie (the roommate) has had POTS for about two years, Kaitlin said, but she is starting to get better and hardly gets dizzy at all anymore. That gives me a lot of hope for my own health, except for the fact that she was diagnosed when she was a teenager (which leads to a better prognosis), and I didn't get sick until I was 22. I plan on asking the new doctor I'm seeing Friday what her honest opinion is of my prognosis. I hope it's positive, but more than that I hope she's just honest with me...
On another note, something I didn't mention in the post I started on June 1, I think I may have finally decided where to go next with my education. That sounds great, and I am very excited about it, but I'm still not 100% sure. When I was in high school, I was absolutely convinced I was going to be a lawyer, and then a judge. I started college as a political science major, but then I decided I didn't really like that. So I changed my major to biology, thinking I would work in a crime lab. By the time I graduated, I had absolutely no clue what I was going to do, but I knew I didn't want to work in a lab. I also know that I could NEVER go to medical school, because I just don't have the stomach for it. I love science. I really do. But lately people keep mentioning how good of a lawyer I would be, or how I should try out law school... and it has got me thinking in that direction again. So I looked into MU's law school. It looks like it might be pretty difficult to get into, but I seem to have a knack for taking tests, like the ACT, so I can't imagine the LSAT being much different. This is the first thing that has really interested me since I started thinking about my post-undergrad education. The only thing is that I couldn't get in until next August. Like 2012. So I started looking into grad school at MU to see what my options were, and I came across an HDFS and Law dual degree in Family Law, and that REALLY interests me. I would really like to speak with an adviser or something in the HDFS department, and ask some questions about what Family Law entails. I would like to learn about what I could do with that degree. Plus I would like to know if I could start taking HDFS classes before applying to law school to get a head start on the whole process. But the degree will take four years. If I don't start until August 2012, I won't graduate with my JD and MS until I am 28 years old. That scares me, for a few reasons. (1) I am going to miss science. I may not want to work in a lab, but I still love science, and I am going to miss learning about it when I'm getting a social science-type degree. (2) I wasn't very good at college. I am scared that four more years is going to really drive me nuts. (3) The JD program at MU is full-time day classes, so I still won't be able to get a big kid job, because I will have to be working nights. Which really saddens me. (4) If I don't graduate until I'm 28, I will be kind of old (in my personal opinion) to be starting a family. And I really want to do that. Not now, but I don't want to be doing it when I'm 28. But I also don't want to be going to law school and trying to raise a family at the same time. This is the scariest part of this whole thing. If I had graduated from college when I was 21, like I should have, and then went on to get a JD and MS, I would only be 26 when I graduated, if I took a year off, and that would be a much better time to start a family... But I don't really want to get a JD just to turn around and have to take a year off from work for pregnancy and baby-raising. I'm just so concerned about my future, something I've never really thought about until now... It's just scary. I just want to make the right decisions. I wish I had more time in my 20s...
I think I just need to see a career counselor. I am really leaning toward this Family Law idea, but if I find something I could do in the field of science that I am also interested in I might do that instead. I think I will make that a goal for this next week -- see a career counselor... I will let you know how that goes...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)