I saw the cardiologist this morning. He couldn't come up with much to say. He said I'm suffering from bouts of sinus tachycardia, that seem to last all day some days. But that there is no structural reason in the heart responsible for this. He said that either the tachycardia is causing the shortness of breath, or the shortness of breath is causing the tachycardia. To find out if my lungs are functioning well, I am to schedule pulmonary function testing. I'd rather have the stress test he mentioned, since my symptoms are worsened by exertion. But for now, just the lung function testing that we'll set up sometime. After the appointment, I sat in the waiting room while my mom checked out. And I started zoning out, and when I stood up, I had a drop attack right there in the office. This is not a strange occurrence for me, because I have drop attacks every few days. But it was ideal for it to happen with nurses there to check my stats. They found that my blood pressure had dropped by about 20-30 points from my bp during the appointment. (It ranged from 120/60 to 110/72 in the appointment, and after the drop attack, it was 90/--) My heart rate was actually lower, probably because I was lying down. But my O2 stats were still great--98/99%. It's good to have these on record for right after a fall. I recovered quickly after drinking several glasses of water. I had been complaining about my thirst, so I was probably a bit dehydrated, which always makes fainting more likely.
I was stuck in bed all day yesterday with severe nausea and fatigue. I barely moved all day. Less fatigue today, but still severe nausea and reflux. Obviously, I still have to be careful about my blood pressure, too.
I wish someone at Dr. Grubb's office could help me out with all of these POTS symptoms right now. But I kind of doubt there's much he could do. My problem is a stuctural problem in my brain...not much can be done about that...just SURGERY. Just gotta keep waiting. The rest of this is just filler. I hate being patient.
