Rocky Mountain High

My POTS has been fine lately. Other than the time I ran out of my Atenolol for a couple of days, no complaints. I decided to try and see if maybe I didn't need it. Turns out I do. The Atenolol, combined with my compression tights and a diet that contains fruits and veggies as opposed to the bread and cheese I was living on.

I'm in North Carolina at the moment. I moved out of Pittsburgh once and for all on May 24th, driving though Virginia and staying overnight with a friend. I'm moving to Denver in a week to begin my MSW studies at the University of Denver. My mom, best friend, and I are driving out via I-40 through Knoxville, Nashville (stay the night), Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City (stay the night), Amarillo, Albuquerque, Santa Fe (stay the night), Colorado Springs and into Denver, arriving on the 14th. Hopefully I'll nail an apartment soon after. The way the rental market in Denver is looking based on Craig's List ads, they're pretty desperate for tenants.

I'm wondering how my POTS is going to react to the elevation. I'm also going to have to go through the heinous process of finding a doctor who knows what I'm talking about.

Wow I Fail

So, I haven't updated this thing in several months. I guess that's a good thing. Over the rest of the summer I really wasn't that symptomatic. Oh, there were days, but not as many.

I'm a member of the marching band at my university. Band camp was in mid August and consisted of 5 days of intense marching and playing. During 2007 at band camp I had a LOT of problems. I'd have to sit out entire practice sessions due to symptoms flares. This is was before I discovered the wonders of compression tights. This year to band camp I didn't have to sit out at all. There were practices where I'd have to lie down and stick my legs up in the air to get the blood out, but that was the extent of it. Performing in band really isn't an issue with me. As long as I'm continuously moving I don't have a lot of POTS problems. Standing in one place for a period of time is what gets me. So practice, especially drill setting days, are the worst for me. Thankfully my class schedule has it to where I miss the days that we normally set drill, so I just learn it as I go along the following day.

If you're interested in seeing what we as a band do, just go to youtube and look up "Pitt Band." Or you can check out of this nifty video that a fan shot of our latest halftime show, which was Guitar Hero (the song is "Through the Fire and Flames" by Dragonforce:



Lately I've been having cyclical stomach problems. They seem to get worse just before my time of the month and subside afterwards. I went to a gastroenterologist a few weeks ago to inquire about this. The doctor was a royal douchebag and was belittling my symptoms. I was this close to up and walking out of the appointment and calling him a douchebag. Towards the end of the appointment he seemed to attempting to redeam himself but not very well. A blood test indicated to that I had a slightly high liver enzyme which indicated fat in my liver, so I went in for an ultrasound the following week. The ultrasound was clean, so I guess the liver enzyme was a fluke.

The past two weeks I've been sick in one capacity or another. I finally got over everything on Wednesday. I had a cold followed by a stomach bug. The stomach bug caused me to miss an exam for a class so I had to go to student health to get a doctor's note so I can make up said exam. The doctor I saw has the most impressive bedside manner that I've seen in a long time. When he asked me for my medications I listed them off. He asked me what I took the atenolol for and I told him POTS (but in long form). He KNEW WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT!!! Granted, he wasn't an expert on it but he KNEW!! I seriously wanted to reach out and hug him. With all my bad crazy doctor experiences, it made my day.

Senior!

Tonight (actually last night since it's now into the wee hours of the morning) I finished up my last academic act of my junior year, thus making me a senior. I'm proud and at the same time wondering where on earth all this time went.

I found a small lump under my armpit yesterday. I made an appointment for my yearly gynecological appointment because I was due for and also asked if they can look at the lump. This happens on Friday. It scared the crap out of me yesterday but now I'm not as stressed. I'm obviously pretty worried, but optimistic that it's nothing, especially considering my age (20). I read online that 80% of these lumps turn out to be nothing. However, I've also been reading about the horrible things it could be (breast cancer, lymphoma). I know the worst thing you can can possibly do to yourself is read about disease insanity online, but I just couldn't help myself.

So, wish me cysts or angry non-cancerous lymph nodes.

Summer Challenges

With the weather in Pittsburgh FINALLY getting nice (read: not raining/snowing every day, you can actually see the sun and you don't need a jacket to leave the house), comes a whole new set of POTS challenges. With warming weather, one's veins don't constrict as much, leading my blood to hang out in my legs even with compression tights most days. It's frustrating and tiring, which probably explains why I've spent most summers being extremely lazy.

Yesterday I left the house to go to another friend's house wearing shorts and a tank top. I realized that this was probably the first anyone other than my roommates has actually seen of my leg since September, when I started wearing the tights.

My semester wraps up on Wednesday evening, though for some reason I keep feeling like I'm done with nothing else to do, which is far from the truth. I still have two papers to finish and three presentations to give. I guess I'm not used to having no actual "finals" during finals week.

On April 30 my roommates and I are leaving for a two week camping trip to Maine in Acadia National Forest. I'm going to keep my contact with the outside world limited to the a couple of phone calls to my parents.

Doctor's Appointment

I went to my Internist appointment on Friday morning. All systems are pretty much a go. The Atenolol is working wonders. I still use my tights, but that's a small price to pay for being able to move and not get tired. I told him about the stones and that I have yet to set a urologist appointment. Yeah, I really need to get on that, but when you have roughly 45-50 pages of written work to do in less than a month which will dictate your grad school admission (in social work, if you get a B or better in all your core classes then you get to skip the foundation year of grad school and get "advanced standing" meaning that you'll have a master's degree in only a year).

So yeah, I'll set that up sometime this week.

However, this week (and next week) is pretty packed. I have a concert Sunday, a community meeting which I HAVE to attend for one of my papers on Monday, a final on Tuesday, a paper due on Wednesday and a paper due on Thursday. The Wednesday and Thursday papers are more or less done (I have about one more additional page for the Wednesday paper). Next week I present and turn in the paper related to that community meeting on Monday, present and turn in a paper on Tuesday, present on Wednesday and I'm basically done. I say basically because I have an extension on another paper to an as of yet undetermined date... my professor and I are going to talk about that on Tuesday.

After all this is said and done my friends and I are taking an "end of the year" trip to Maine to camp for a little while. Should be fun.