Following Up My "shrimp" Post

[carinara]

Hello again, i desperatly need all of your help and wisdom at the moment. It looks like something in my body "shifted" again.

I now experience symptoms i remember having in my big POTS flare ups in 1998, 2004 and 2007 before my diagnosis (summer 2007). They always stayed with me for a while and made my POTS much worse and uncontrollable. When i got finally diagnosed in 2007 these added symptoms started to dissapear again and i was "just" left with the usual POTS drama still getting used to my diagnosis and learning about it on the Dinet site as much as i could. In the past 2 years since my diagnosis i always remembered that there were some extra symptoms that only came on when i felt my worsed and they left me bedridden because they worsened my POTS symptoms dramatically. Because of this i wasnt able to work for months each time. By now, i know my body very well and i notice how my body starts to respond differently again. I hope that you guys with all your wisdom and knowledge will help me to figure out what is happening to me at the moment. My doctor has no clue.

I dont want to be off work again, i am a secretary and can sit 99% of the time (thank god), i have so many things going on right now and i was so much looking forward to the end of summer because now my favourite time of the year starts. I hope that i will find a way to controll whatever is happening at the moment. I have learned so much about POTS already but i know there is something strange on top of it right now, that makes my feel much worse then usual. I try now to describe what "changes" i have noticed in the past few weeks:

6 weeks ago i stopped eating carbs because i noticed that they make me more symptomatic then they usually do

2 weeks ago i got my period, it was stronger then usual and. I felt much worse then i normally do. Ever since then i have headaches every day. (Thats very unusual because i normally never have headaches)

1 week ago i ate shrimps that set my body off completely (i already posted about it)

Ever since then, the following symptoms are present.

- daily headaches

- all of a sudden a hot face

- BP always around 160/100

- have to pee a lot more

- cant breath right and deep (all of a sudden, not all the time)

- all of a sudden i start feeling strange, my hands get ice cold and i feel as if iam shaking inside, it feels as if my body shuts down.

- feel as if i swallowed a rock, as if there is a lumb in my stomach and throat, feels as if i swallowed a brush

- my ears popp and iam very light sensitive

- very tired

- some smells make me sneeze and i develope cold-like symptoms.

-bowels movements set my ANS off

- my HR reacts and spikes a lot worse then usual

-no appetit, lost weight already (the past 2 years i was slowly gaining weight without any obvious reason, now iam loosing it again)

- i need to eat (also because of bloodsugar problems at the moment), but if i eat something i feel sick after it. (but not all the time, )

- i sweat more (i havent sweated much in the past 2 years)

- Get the shakes

- My temperatureregulation seems not right at the moment, one second iam really hot and then i get the shivers.

-muscle tightness

- a sudden tingling all over my body and inside my head.

I feel much weaker after all and sometimes it feels as if i would come down with a cold, but i never do in the end.

I can feel ok one minute and then an "attack" off all them symptoms come over me and my thorat gets tight.

I havent changed my medication in years, i take a tiny dose of beta blocker (4x a day) and another medication in the morning to keep my BP down. I started on 5mg Zyrtec on wednesday (after the shrimp caused this big flare up).

I have no idea what to do now, my doctor is out of the office and she doesnt know anything about POTS anyway. What should i search for? Do you have any ideas what this could be? Should i just take Zyrtec for a week and see if it helps? Could this be the "left over" from the shrimp thing last weekend or is it possible that the shrimps caused a shift in my body? What does it mean if Zyrtec works? ( i think it does help but want to watch my reaction to it for a few more days), does it mean that i have to much histamine in me or MCAD or an allergie? The silly thing is, that i have to advice my doctor what to do next, like i said she doesnt have a clue and is out of the office anyway. Please help me figure this one out. I try to relax and sleep as much as i can over the weekend and hope that i will be able to make it through my 8 hour workday on monday.

Another thing is, i would also love to hear your advice on how i can handle these "attacks" at work without leaving. At some point (when all the symptoms come together) i usually get panicky after a while and then all i want to do is go home. I have the opportunatey to lay down somewhere at work plus my sister works in the same company. My goal is to make it trough my workday and not run home like in 2004 and 2007 and stay home for months. I figure if i lay down, take an antihistamine or a Betablocker i might feel better.

Sorry for this very long post. Iam so much looking forward to your advice. Thanks a lot, carinara

[tinkerbella]

hello sweets,

Oh what a rollar coster we live on....sounds like the same ride I'm on lately... I had shrimp last week too, but I also have a while bunch of other things going on also and still do. So it is time to do a 3rd more intense TTT testing, bloodwork, corttisol stim testing, 24 hour blood pressure test, and then we will sit and try to figure what is going on. sounds to me that maybe if and I don't know your situation, if you have acess to good help care that maybe it's time to take a second look at what is going on. My Doc thinks my body can't tolderate trying to be postural at all right now, even sitting and we need more answers and the only way to know are by these instense tests.

Is that pressure a sitting pressure or a standing one? It is high and we need to keep track or both sitting and standing about five mins. apart... I wish you the best and I hate it right now. as my body is so mixed up waking up eating at night with the hungry horrors, craving carbs again, sometimes I wish I was little and my mommie could just take care of me. Living all alone stinks!!!

The best advice I can give is check in with your doctor...

Sending you (((((HUGS))))) and wishing all of us who feel this way will feel some relief soon.

blessings~

bellamia~

[firewatcher]

Carinara,

When my son has an allergic reaction, they put him on stronger antihistamines and steroids for three days to a week afterwards. The INJESTED allergen is still working its way through his system and he could have another reaction from the same thing days later! It sounds like you have hypersensitized yourself and your body is really over-reacting. The stuffiness could be explained by vasomotor rhinitis, which is an ANS thing, not an allergy thing; the ears popping and sneezing at smells is very indicative of vasomotor rhinitis. I don't know about your medication tolerance, but when I get this I take Guaifenisen (Mucinex in the US) because it thins nasal secretions and anti-histamines. I also find that if I Neti (saline nasal wash) with very salty water it will shrink my nasal passages for a while and is sometimes more effective than the Mucinex. It may not be an allergy thing, but a histamine thing (like MCAD.) Since they don't know the connection between POTS and MCAD, there may be a cyclical or trigger form of histamine sensitivity. I second BellaMia about watching your BP.

Good luck, sweetie! I hope it calms down soon.

[ramakentesh]

the increased blood pressure in POTS should only occur when orthostatic and represents increases in peripheral resistance only - usually it also results in reduced blood flow to the brain. As most of the dangers of hypertension relate to arterial clogging short term fluctuations arent regarded as a significant problem anyway, but even less so in someone with relative hypovolumia.

[carinara]

My BP numbers mentioned are the ones laying down. Iam not so much worried about my BP because it is always more on the higher side, but in the past week my overall BP did increase a little.

I was hospitalized in 2007 and one of my biggest concernes has always been my higher blood pressure. (Because that was the only thing my doctors could messure prior to my POTS Diagnosis). MY BP went up to 180/130 at times. Other times it was to low but most of the times it was too high. Well. In the hospital I spent many weeks on discussing my BP Problems with many different doctors. They did all the tests with me and they meassured my BP all the time, during standing, during stress and so on. Whenever i thought and felt that my BP must be really high, they meassured it straight away. Sometimes it turned out to be high, sometimes it was normal. They put a 24 hour BP test on me twice.

Well, all kind of different doctors told me the same, they said, as long as the BP goes down (during the night when you sleep for example) its ok. Only if you have real high numbers ALL THE TIME and OVER A LONG LONG PERIOD OF TIME, (not days, but months and years) Then it CAN cause damage to you and only then you are at a higher risk for stroke and so on.

In my case the BP does come down during the night.They said, that there is no danger. They explained to me what BP numbers people reach, in during sports, lifting weights and so on. These numbers are not dangerous if they dont stay up there 24 hours a day! They even showed me their numbers and i could see, that they had higher numbers from time to time as well. The doctors and the hospital stuff really wanted to try to help me get rid of my BP fear and did everything to help me not to worry about it anymore.

I wonder if somebody can tell me for how long i supposed to be taking the antihistamine? My doctor told me to try it out for a week and wait if its helping? Since she went on holiday i rang her partner the other day and asked her if it is ok for me to take 5mg of zyrtek in an "emergency" and another 5mg in the evenings (like my doctor told me). She said thats fine. I just dont really get the logic behind it. I explained my doctor what happened after i ate the prawns and told her about me suspecting a histamin intolerance behind it. She straight away prescribed me this antihistamine, so does that mean i suffer from histamine intolerance, or mcad? How long should i take it for? She just did a tryptase bloodtest a few weeks ago (after i told her about it ) and it came back ok. I dont want to take unecessary medications because i do react very sensitiv to many of them. At the moment i cant tell if zyrtec is helping me because i dont know how i would feel without it. But i think it does probably help. Is it right that Histamin and Adrenalin go hand in hand? I did experience some surges in the past few days. How do you know if its an adrenalin surge an when its a histamine reaction? Dont really know when to take an extra betablocker and when an extra zyrtek? Sorry for even more questions. Carinara

[prettyinpink]

You poor thing. My thoughts are with you. When I have an allergic reaction to something I have to take antihistamines for a few weeks afterwards because it takes a while for my body to settle back down again. If you are suddenly histamine sensitive it might be that they are keeping you on it long term which is usually ok as a lot number of people take zyrtec, claritin regularly. When my bloodpressure spiked from the midodrine it caused headaches, hotflashes, nauseau. If this has all been since you stopped eating carbs is it possible that maybe you aren't getting some nutrition from carbs that you needed? Hang in there and hopefully things will calm down soon.