If Only I'd Known About Pots...

[sweetfeather]

I thought I'd share with all of you that my 13 year old son was diagnosed in December with POTS. I don't think he'd have been diagnosed so young, if at all, if I hadn't been diagnosed with POTS two years ago. You see, I had been diagnosed about five or six years ago with inattentive ADHD. I saw similar inattentive symptoms in my son and his teachers alerted me his inattention was impacting his grades. His doctor diagnosed him with ADHD-inattentive when he was ten after his teachers and I completed a survey of his behavior and he did a blind trial of ritalin with two weeks of ritalin and two with a placebo in unmarked bottles. The teachers said his attention improved dramatically on what proved to be the ritalin.

Well, after I was diagnosed with POTS and I realized a lot of my inattentive symptoms were actually from POTS, I wondered if perhaps the same was true for my son. One of my biggest clues was how he looked singing on stage during choir concerts. He only had two concerts a year but it seemed like at every concert he looked really pale and he'd shift around and shake his legs. During the first concert after I was diagnosed with POTS, I paid extra close attention to him. I saw his face getting pale... and I noticed how he kept shifting his weight and jiggling his feet just like I remembered... I examined the expressions which flashed on his face and it became so obvious to me... why hadn't I noticed it? He flashed an expression which looked like he was feeling faint and then he'd jiggle and smile and then it would repeat all while he continued singing. How could I have missed this clue? Well... it was because I didn't know anything about POTS but once I did it was like a spotlight was turned on and a vague observation and a fleeting expression suddenly became magnified and crystal clear.

Are there any clues you realize you missed that in hindsight you might have noticed had you known about POTS?

Here's a missed clue from me:

"I think I have inattentive ADD, Dr... for one thing... when I go to the grocery store I'll find myself wandering around looking at stuff...I go into a daze and lose track of time and sometimes I can't even remember what all I've been looking at. I often forget to buy the very things I went there for! Then when I leave the store, I never can remember where I parked my car. I'll wander around in the parking lot looking for it and trying to think where in the world could I have left it? And then when I find it,,, I always feel so flustered I have to sit in my car for awhile before I feel able to drive home."