Random Anecdote

I go to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for my medical stuffs. This center frequently gets ranked among the best hospitals in the country with a wide array of specialties. They can treat pretty much anything there.

When I was at the doc's office yesterday, he attempted to enter "postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome" into the diagnosis field in the computer. It came back with an error message, saying that it was an invalid entry.

For a hospital as big and supposedly as great as UPMC to not recognize POTS just shows how rare this thing is. I don't know the exact figures of how many people have POTS, but I read somewhere that it was 500,000 in the US. For a population of 300 million people, that equals 0.17% of the population that has this disorder. Pretty freakin' rare.

Also, I'm having my first day off the Florinef today. So far all is well. I was a little foggy and feverish at the beginning of the basketball game (I'm in the pep band) but that has subsided.

Atenolol

So I went into the doc's office today to discuss my tilt table results. I got a copy of the results (hell yeah! Concrete proof!) and under the section where it summarizes this called "Impression" it says:

"This is an abnormal study. This is borderline evidence for postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. This was no orthostatic hypotension. This is borderline post ganglionic sympathetic sudomotor dysfunction as well.

These findings may be seen in patients with POTS of relatively mild severity."

Ok. I have mild POTS. I knew that. People with severe POTS generally speaking can barely leave their house. I still go to school, work, and have an active life, just sometimes it's a bitch to do so. BTW- that postgangilionic thing basically means my feet don't sweat a lot... apparently this is also a POTS trait.

So what's the solution? Atenolol.

This drug is a beta blocker that blocks too much adrenaline. It also lowers blood pressure... today my doc said that for a woman my age my blood pressure was on the high side today. I've never been told that.

I'm also going off the Florinef. Sorry florinef, you and I had a good run, but it's time for me to move on. Going off the Florinef could decrease my blood pressure (it's supposed to raise it). I could also lose some weight in this process because Florinef makes you retain water. The plan is to stop with the Florinef for a week to give my body and chance to cool off and then start with the Atenolol.

I could also be going off the Paxil CR because he doesn't agree with me being on it indefinitely and neither do I but we both agree that this isn't the time to try and withdraw.

So we shall see how this medical saga plays out.