I visited the eye doctor on Friday and the good news is I have healthy eyes. The yucky news is that my vision issues are caused by my lack of oxygen from POTS, and there's really nothing that can be done about it. I've been trying to come up with some positive solutions to my recent struggle with my vision. Simple solutions like frequent changes in the kinds of things I do, such as computer time, TV time, reading and plain old fashion busy work. But there have also been some high tech answers as well. My e-reader has a font size option so I can make the words a bit easier to read (though the problem seems to be with time reading and not the size of font). I can even download audio books on my new high tech phone!
Thinking about these new high tech answers to my problems made me realize how good it is to have been diagnosed with POTS in 2008. There are medicines that help enormously, there are watches and phones to help monitor my heart, I have a computer to learn more about my condition and then there's Facebook to bring me together with other POTSies and remind me I'm not alone dealing with this. I can only imagine what it must have been like to get POTS 200 years ago. My imagination takes me to a southern plantation. I'm laying on a fainting couch fanning myself complaining of having the vapors as all my friends and family watch in dismay. But I figure with my luck I'd end up on a prairie in the middle of nowhere too sick to milk the cow or feed the chickens. I couldn't wash the clothes with a wash board in the creek and I definitely couldn't pluck a chicken if my life depended on it. I would be lucky to see a doctor and there wouldn't be treatment options. The chances of survival would probably be slim.
The diagnosis for dysautonomia has only been around for about 20 years. Dysautonomia is still a mystery to doctors around the world, but there's allot of research being done. I often complain of the doctors lack of knowledge, the lack of treatment and the feeling of being a guinea pig for this disease. Well the truth is treating dysautonomia is not perfected yet and I AM a guinea pig. My prayer is that being a guinea pig is going to make things better for my children and their children (since there has been a link to this being genetic). Having POTS blows big time chunks, but I'd rather have it now than 200 years ago. My life with this POTSy body here on earth is a teeny tiny fraction of eternity with a new body that Christ has promised me. I need to learn to live with this challenge and try to see what God wants me to do with the life He has given me.
Inspired,
Michele
Revelations 21:4-5
4 and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no loner be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." 5 And He who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." And He said, "Write, for these words are faithful and true."
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You probably know but maybe not all your readers... in other times and still in other places, POTS and Dysautonomia in general was known as Neurasthenia. But, you're right, there was even less to be done about it than now. At least it was treated as a real disease, though, which is better than a lot of us get now.
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