White Blood Count And Pots

[momdi]

Trying to fly home after a nice family visit, we all had to leave the airplane as Mike had an overwhelming POTS episode and was near to passing out. Being wheeled off the plane, being the center of attention in the terminal, then taken by ambulance from the airport, and ending up in the ER was not the airport experience we had planned, but the question here is....

In the ER yesterday, Mike's white blood count was 22,000 and his temp was 101.5, and his lying down pulse was in the 120s (when he sat up, it went up to 140-150). They couldn't find any source of infection - negative strep, flu, chest x-ray, urinalysis. So no obvious sign of infection. The QUESTION is - can POTS itself cause such a high white count? And temperature?

Mike feels a bit better today - fever better but not gone, pulse near normal - and would very much like to try to fly home again. He is wondering if this could all be due to a really really bad POTS attack.

What do you think?

[scarfgirl]

I always have a high WBC and tend to run a low grade fever at random, so yeah I think POTs can cause that for some people.

I had a miserable time once: fever, joint aches, crushing fatigue, even worse than normal tachycardia, yet no infection was found for the longest time. Finally I told them to look at my sinuses and they found the infection! I had chronic sinusitis, but noone saw it until they looked up my nose and saw the infection. I never manifested any of the symptoms, but the infection was sure 'nough there. So infection can be hiding in strange places....your body knows it's there, but it won't always let you know where.

[potsgirl]

I really don't think that POTS can cause a major difference in white blood cell counts. I've never seen it listed as a symptom in research papers, and I think that would be a pretty important one to list. I believe that Mike probably had an infection of some sort, somewhere. Common causes can be allergies, a bacterial or a viral infection, certain drugs, and a high amount of stress. This also be a sign of forms of leukemia and other illnesses, but that would be rare.

Main point - is he feeling better today, and what did his autonomic doc say?

[yogini]

POTS shouldn't affect WBC. It can affect body temp and cause low grade fevers, but it is more likely that whatever is causing the high WBC is causing the fever. Anything else going on in your body could trigger a POTS flare up. Did they give him any kind of antibiotics or anything to treat him? Hope he's feeling better.

[kayjay]

I think Jana is really correct. Your son must be fighting a virus, infection or the like. I have been sick for 11 years and have never had a high WBCC although I usually have a bit of a fever. Last fall I was sick with a temp of 103 and my WBC count was fine. Helped me get my diagnosis. I was having a drug reaction.

I hope things are better soon... sorry for your suffering.

[scarfgirl]

So a high WBC is not normal for POTS? I'll be sure to mention that to the doctors when they repeatedly ignore my count as an indicator that something might be wrong and insist it's just because of the POTS. I always felt they were ignoring something because they had no obvious reason to explain it, but since more than one doctor did it I began to believe them.

((I went to the ER once because I had gotten so weak that I couldn't get out of bed to feed myself, tests revealed a high WBC count and blood in my urine and the attending Dr told me nothing was wrong.))

[potsgirl]

Do you remember what your WBC was? I think anything over 10,500 in considered high.