My Health Story Part 1
(originally published in 2020)
Hi Friends,
Thanks for taking the time to read my health story. I am currently 24 years old and have dealt with health issues my entire life. To this day, I’ve been diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Hashimoto’s disease, hypothyroidism, epilepsy (later learned to be a misdiagnosis), acid reflux, IBS, asthma, staph, anxiety, and depression.
Other than getting sick a lot as a child and having stomach issues (acid reflux and IBS), my first serious (or what I thought was serious) diagnosis came at the age of 13 after having a petit mal seizure. I was diagnosed as an epileptic, but it was my mother that knew better. She took me to get a second opinion at Cleveland Clinic where I had a week-long EEG. I was told that I had seizure tendencies but was NOT an epileptic and the seizure could have been caused by a variety of things including the medication I was taking at the time or being at a hormonal age. Luckily, I was able to get off of Keppra, a common medication used to treat seizures, that I did not respond well to at all.
At around the age of 16 I became extremely tired all the time, experienced a lot of joint/skin pain, and every now and then would get an extremely sharp pain in my head. I also had trouble taking showers and using any iron on my hair because I would get extremely dizzy, hot, and blackout. This began my journey of bouncing from doctor to doctor for years. I was tested for mono, Crohn’s disease, Lupus, diabetes…you name it and I was tested for it. I saw a neurologist, infectious disease specialist, rheumatologist, and an endocrinologist. Other than being diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease by the endocrinologist, none of them had answers for me. Actually, their answer was stress. Yeah, right.
While my attendance was poor, one of my high school teachers (who also has POTS) began to notice that I always took a very long time taking tests but still did well on them. As she saw this as a familiar pattern, we chatted after school one day and said I should research POTS because I seem fit a lot of the symptoms. After a visit with one of my doctors, they ran out of the room to speak with an adolescent specialist who they thought could help me. As she explained my symptoms to the adolescent specialist, he wanted to see me right away.
As expected, he diagnosed me with POTS within minutes and luckily, because my symptoms grew worse that year. I was now 17 and a senior in high school. My skills in the sports I was in started to decline, my attendance declined even more, I experienced issues with my vision, my concentration got even worse, and I grew increasingly tired. Missing days turned into missing weeks of school. I dropped two classes and at that point I wasn’t even sure I was going to graduate. Then, I tested positive for mono.
As I regained energy, my new school schedule became going in for three hours at a time and completing work as my teachers delivered it to me in a tutoring room. That went on for months and that was how I finished my senior year, which was hard enough on my mental state so I began taking antidepressants. The good news is I finished and got accepted into college…
This feels long enough to me. Read about my health battle in college and how I survived in “My Health Story Part 2” coming soon.
All the love,
Chelsea
Questions or feeling like you can relate? Send me an email at chelsea@bodywisehc.com or reach out to me through any of my social media accounts.