I Eat Salt, Therefore I Bloat

7:15 pm

101/69 88 bpm

No wonder I feel so good! It must have been the salt bagel and heavily salted (by me) minestrone soup I ate for lunch. I don't remember the last time my standing blood pressure has been this high, if ever since this tsunami hit. And the POTS (I like to blame everything on POTS) headache that followed my monthly migraine for a week finally broke two days ago, and I actually felt almost headache free today. Which is why I'm able to write after work tonight.

I don't want to write at the moment about the tilt table test, I'll get to that. I want to write about whatever pops into my head regarding this syndrome. I'll jump ahead and tell you that when all was said and done with the testing, and when I listened to all of the doctors, and took into account all I've read, I surmised that I have a combo of orthostatic intolerance, POTS, and some autonomic nervous system failure. YIPPPPEEEEE!!!

And in my mind, there was life before August 2009, and life after August 2009.

Like right now, at this very moment, I actually feel good. I'm tired, and if I closed my eyes, I could fall asleep in the middle of a highway, but the fatigue doesn't bother me nearly as much as the adrenaline and norepinephrine surges that make my heart beat out of my chest and make me want to run a mile as fast as I can just to burn it OFF. The night before last, I had just shut off the light and was lying in bed thinking about nothing really, when all of a sudden my heart started beating so hard and so fast I thought my neighbors would call the police.

This had happened a few times before so I was used to it, but now I was pissed. I wanted to go to sleep but it was a little hard to do feeling like I was sprinting 100 yards. I had to get a grip and I wanted to do it without drugs. So, I took a deep breath and held it. I felt my heart rebel - it thump-thump-thumped, then stopped, then thumped twice, then stopped for two beats, then gave me two very slow beats. Then skipped, then two fast beats, then a few more slow ones. There...you bastard, I'm making you slow down and work for me now.

I let out my breath and held it a few times more, then breathed very slowly, hoping this would work. Surprisingly, it did. I was a bit shocked, and happy for the small victory. And I fell asleep, exhausted, soon after.

And then there's waking up feeling like a mad woman every morning before I take the meds and they kick in. It's like there's a 3-alarm fire in my chest. Where's the fire!? Grab the hoses!! Put it out! Put it OUT! It's like Poe's telltale heart, you just want to make it stop because it's driving you crazy. My pulse races with a sense of urgency, and I have no sense of realistic urgency. Other than getting to the pill bottle and the bathroom...

But luckily the meds work fast. But this body-mind dichotomy messes with my head. And it works in the opposite too, like right now. Why am I so tired? I've asked myself a dozen times today (this effects your short-term memory too...). Am I jet-lagged? Did I stay up too late last night? No, this fatigue goes way beyond one late night, this is a week's worth of late nights. Or a flight to Japan and back. This is slushing through mud 4 feet high fatigue, heavy-headed, heavy-lidded, if I could just lay my head down for a few minutes...I'd sleep for 8 hours! And I know I would because I've been doing it.

I always reset my clock alarm right after it goes off in the morning because I know that I could fall asleep with the tv and all the lights on, and wake up at 6am the next morning. I do it at least 3 days a week; I try to stay disciplined during the week because of work but the weekends are a free-for-all. I used to live below a very old lady who always had her radio on, and it would piss me off because I would hear it when I tried to sleep at night. Why won't she shut that damn radio off? I wondered. Well, now I'm that lady, with a tv.

My commute to work is a terror ride. It's a balancing act of water and bathrooms, or passing out. I get up now a half hour early so I can drink enough fluids in order to be able to stand upright to make it to work. However, what goes in, must come out. I drink just enough water to make it to my first stop to drop off my dog to his daycare in the morning. And I use the bathroom there. And I drink some more water. That's just a few blocks' commute, but I'm usually Dizzy Lizzy, concentrating hard to stay upright, and focusing on my dog to keep him safe.

After that, I hop on the subway for two short stops to Penn Station where I board a train to New Jersey. A very short ride, 9 minutes or so on a good day, with a bathroom in the NJ station. That gets dicey sometimes, especially since NJ transit sucks. I start to sweat bullets when I hear the work "delay". My bladder starts to sweat bullets when it hears the word delay. I start talking to myself: you can do this, you didn't drink that much water at your last pit stop, and then I look for a seat. There are never any seats, so I look to the stairs, where I'm not too proud to park my ass if the wait goes past 5 minutes. At 5 minutes, I'm sitting on the stairs, praying the train is ready soon.

After the train trip and pit stop there's a shuttle ride, where I drink a lot of water, because that's a short trip, and then, as soon as I hit the office, it's to the loo I go. When I was first diagnosed, this trip was truly a horror, but as my medications have kicked in and I've learned to live with and trick this syndrome, it's gotten a little easier, but each day is like some sick adventure that I'm grateful to survive in the end. But it all takes precision water drinking, sometimes on the bad days some salted carrots (yum at 7am), and really good timing with the trains.

I want my old life back!

Oh, and my old jeans. I eat salt, therefore I bloat. Yes I do. One of the loveliest monkeys is stomach bloating after eating, especially if you eat carbs. Carbs are the enemy, which sucks because I love them. No matter what I eat, how little or how much, I look at least 6 months preggers after eating and it takes hours for it to go down. That combined with the bloat that comes with the fludrcortisone, salt and water intake has forced me to go up a jeans size. Just to accommodate my stomach, like some old man with a beer belly.

I used to be a girl.

I will end with an upside, because there's always an upside (or I'd kill myself!). You know, when you get to a certain age, they say, "honey, it's either your face, or your ass". My face had gotten kind of thin and although I didn't really have many wrinkles I was looking a bit drawn. But now...who needs restylane or fillers! I've got water retention bloat and it has taken years off my face!