Type 2

     "I'm going to throw up" I mumbled to the MA who had just finished drawing my blood. It wasn't a threat, more of a hope that the nausea that had hit was a pre-symptom of puking rather than the more ominous alternative that I knew was a possibility. My vision blurred but I was aware of the grey bottom of the garbage bin that had just been thrust into my lap. For a second I noticed how the liner bunched at the bottom to make a kind of star formation. Ringing. Blackness. And then nothing existed at all.

     To back up I pass out a lot, around 8 times a day. But there are two different types of fainting for me. Type 1, I am very used to and have become less afraid of. It can be set of by lots of things; dehydration, standing more than my allotted 5 minutes, eating (any kind of food), ect. When it happens, I lose control of my body and I slump down, can't open my eyes or move but for some reason I can still hear and am somewhat aware of my surroundings. I'm stuck in my own body, unable to escape until it ends. You'd think this would be my own personal hell, right? Especially given that being trapped in my body unable to open my eyes is my worst fear. Well after its happened a few hundred times you get used to it. The fear diminishes because you have to deal with it because that's what you've been dealt. Type 2 on the other hand is quite difficult for me. It has probably only happened several times in my life and has always involved needles. Don't presume it comes as a fear of needles, I get tests done so often that I know the prick doesn't hurt, and the draw will soon be over. But still type 2 comes and I don't always see it coming. 

     After the deafening ringing in my ears and everything goes black, there's not even nothingness. Nothing exists. Mankind doesn't exist, life doesn't exist, I don't exist.  And then for no reason at all I'm in a dream, but I don't know what a dream is because to my knowledge I just started my existence 2 seconds ago. The dream always has to do with movement, the first time I was lying on a skateboard on my back that was careening out of control, other times its been vehicles of some sort, but always chaos and movement.  This time I was strapped into a lime green roller coaster sitting acrossed from some middle-aged women all wearing matching pink t-shirts who were screaming that the ride had malfunctioned and we were all about to plummet to our deaths. I have no explanation for this scene that I was sure I was experiencing but it may explain my strong dislike and fear of roller coasters. As the women wailed the strap holding me in tightened and started to crush my ribs. I tried to draw breath but my lungs burned and my chest felt as if a boulder had pinned me against the seat. The women's howls turned to ringing and the coaster blurred into white walls. There was a woman standing in front of me. Something told me I knew her, but up until a few seconds ago nothing had existed so who was she, what was she? And while we're at it what was I? Human. And she is my mother. It seemed that the realizations took years to come to but looking back it was milliseconds. After what felt like forever I felt my sunken chest fill with air as I heard a loud gasping that I could only assume was coming from me. I kept panting as I tuned into what my mother was saying, I can't remember it now but I focused all of me on following her direction. I vaguely remembered where I was and what had happen. The MA was propping my feet up when a nurse came in and yelled at me. Why did they always yell and demand I talk? I was still struggling to breathe and all these people were still greyish white and other off colors in my blurry vision. Mom began to explain what happened and I tried not to hear because terror had taken hold of my body and I didn't know if I could fight to stay in it. I watched as Mom talked without moving her eyes from my face. I saw something in her eyes that my mind told me was fear but I could not quite process that with the nurse yelling. She said that her name was Cookie and wasn't that an odd name and can I say her name back to her. It took everything I had to repeat the word just so she would stop. I know she meant well and was just doing her job but even now just remembering it makes me so irritated. 

     They wheeled me out of the room into a room with a bed and a mirror. In the mirror I saw an ash colored face with dazed eyes and absolutely no sign of life in her. I slowly and horrifyingly realized that I was looking at me.

     Over the next couple hours life came back into me but my memory was terrible and I felt confused. Somewhere along the line my mom told me I had stopped breathing for the minute or so that I was unconscious. That had never happened before. 

     The next few day I felt like a head trauma patient. For an entire day, maybe two, I kept having to remind myself that I was not 17 and it was not 2011 like my brain was telling me. Four years of memories were there but when I recalled them it was like I was remembering something that a friend had done or something someone had told me had happened. It did not feel like I was recalling memories of my own life experiences. 

     And then there was the oddity that when I came to I forgot I had siblings, when I got around to remembering them I only remembered half. I did eventually recall my other siblings 20 minutes later but it was still highly concerning for me to forget the people I love most dearly.

     The whole thing was quite terrifying, but I finally feel back to myself.  My 21 year old self that remembers and doesn't have to remind herself of the year.  When I woke up and felt normal I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  The worst of it was over.

Mayo Clinic

     I had originally thought that I would write a short paragraph for each day I was in Arizona describing the events of the day, leading up to the last and final appointment where I would have an all encompassing diagnoses and plan for how to fix it.  In my mind where I like everything to be organized and for stories to have a start and a finish, it made sense.  But my trip down to the Mayo Clinic is not a story, nor is it something that even had a definite start so the “end” would not likely be instantaneous either. Also having ended up being there for almost a month it would make for a lengthy story if each day were allotted a few paragraphs.
     With the fainting taking over my every decision my world became very small.  Before I did anything I had to think of every possible way it could go wrong. Could I stand and walk to the bathroom without asking mom to sit outside the door just in case I passed out?  Was it worth it to eat my favorite Chick-Fil-A salad if the price tag was 15 minutes of unconsciousness and an hour of stomach seizures?  Should I let the well-meaning friend come over to visit even at the risk that they may see me black out?  It’s been 30 minutes, have I been sitting up right too long?  Even with over thinking every action I could not possibly avoid the 5-12 episodes of fainting a day.  Which is the reason I ended up at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona for 3 ½ weeks. 
     The initial appointment went really well, and for the first time in years no one wanted to evaluate me from a psychology standpoint.  After that it was slow going.  We had to wait for more than three days for the insurance to approve all the tests and other consultations that the first doctor wanted to do.  To add to that it was November and according to the scheduling department it was their “busy season”.  Who knew a clinic/hospital had a busy season?  They told me it was all the snowbirds escaping to Arizona’s warm climate for the winter.  That made more sense when I saw the waiting room and realized I was the one patient under the age of 65.  So while the other patients were collecting their retirement I had to wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Finally things were approved and we got started.  They did lots of tests, looking for things I’d never heard of.  Some were painless and others ranged from uncomfortable to highly unpleasant.  As I got the tests done we were able to check the results on my online record and as always everything was coming back normal.  The consultations were mostly non eventful, with the doctors acknowledging that I had a problem but it didn't fit into their very specific set of expertise.
    I found that every other day I would break down and think “I can’t do this and plus it’s not worth it, they never find anything!”.  Through a roller coaster of hope and disappointment they did find something, P.O.T.S. (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome).  If you Google that Wikipedia will tell you that you can get it from getting a virus as a child or having rapid growth as a pre-teen/teenager and that if it’s the latter you may grow out of it in your early 20’s.  Before you get excited, for me its not the second one seeing as the first episode started at around 18 months.  I don’t know if it was from a virus either actually.  P.O.T.S. falls under an umbrella of syndromes that can be connected with Dysautonomia, in short that means that your autonomic nervous system doesn't function correctly and the symptoms can present themselves in many different ways for different patients.  I haven’t been diagnosed with Dysautonomia officially but it’s something that is on the table for discussion when we see the Neurologist that specializes in that sort of stuff when we revisit in April.  It was a bummer that we weren't able to get in with that doctor while we were there but we had already missed Thanksgiving and I was not about to miss Christmas too.
     After the P.O.T.S. diagnose the doctors were still wanting to look for more because it doesn't explain all of my symptoms.  P.O.T.S. patients don’t often pass out when lying down, actually they never do.  The main symptom with P.O.T.S. is passing out when standing, either too quickly or just standing too long.  “Too long” can be defined differently for each case but in mine, I've only got about 5 minutes maximum until I’m passed out.  The reason for this is that when I stand up my heart rate jumps from a normal pace to 50+ beats faster within seconds.  My body does this to compensate for the blood flow change that takes place when going from a sitting to standing position. Everyone’s body does that to some extent but mine is over compensating which results in a black out.
     I also had some results come back from a test that confirms that my body metabolize some types of prescription medication incorrectly.  This can be quite dangerous if I take certain kinds of medications even in small doses, the drug can build up and become a toxic dose because my body isn't breaking it down fast enough.  Because of this a medication to help the the P.O.T.S. hasn't been picked yet but is something to be decided.
     This new information left me a little confused as to what I could do to make myself more functional.  I started working on meditation with my wonderful hosts that were so amazing to take us in for two weeks.  The Hammons' (my aunt's in-laws) let us stay at their Arizona home and as if that weren't enough, Dan helped me learn how to meditate and helped release pressure points with myofacial release, a type of massage therapy.  He instructed me to envision warmth coming into my abdomen to help with the stomach seizures and was surprised to feel a strong pulse come immediately to my abs.  He figured that if I could consciously control my blood flow I could redirect my blood to my head when I felt faint and light headed.  I have been practicing this and have found that I can keep myself from passing out as much.  It takes a lot of consideration and time but I realised that I'd been doing it all along.  I had staved off unconsciousness several times before but I hadn't figured out how I'd stayed awake as long as I did.  Unbeknownst to me, while my peers were attending high school, graduating, going off to college, getting married and having babies, I had been perfecting the art of staying alive by influencing something that should be completely automatic.