Blood Pressure

[Guest veryblue]

Hi..Oh I got good news at the doctors today but now I am feeling horrible...I've been battling this for 4 months now and today I feel like crap. MY BP is so low...even lying down. 108/70 or so and then 95/60 standing...am I dying...is this disease progressive...(I'm only 21 if it gets worse then Iguess I would eventually die) or is this just a bad day that will get better. I've never had drops in BP until recently...on my tilt I had no drops just a fast HR. What is going to become of me? I am so scared!

[Aprilmarie52]

the disease is not fatal. you may feel like you are dying but you arent. just hang in there, we have all gone through bad spells like that.

[Deb]

Hi VeryBlue,

Try to calm down and rest as much as you can today. You probably aren't dying, but I know how that feels when you feel terrible and don't know why. Try to keep your fluid levels up by drinking a lot of water and something like gatorade that will replenish your electrolytes. Eat something salty, too. If you have them, wear your compression hose. The panty hose are the best.

As far as it being progressive, it's not in the sense that your organs will start to deteriorate. But it is in that most people seem to have good spells and then bad spells. And sometimes a bad spell is worse than any previous ones. For myself, I think that stress plays into how bad my bad spells are. Even having good news can be a stressor for people with POTS. I had a birthday party on Saturday, and I felt bad the whole time, and even worse the next day.

I feel sure you'll start to have good days again, soon. Read through the other posts about how to keep your blood pressure up.

Hope you feel better, soon! Deb

[MomtoGiuliana]

Bless you, I know you are going through a hard time right now. You are not dying, but it feels like it, I KNOW! No one who hasn't experienced this really understands, unfortunately, which makes it hard too. POTS is not fatal nor usually progressive. You will, most likely, get much better with treatment. Keep your fluids and salt up, try to move around when you can since too much lying down can only make the orthostatic intolerance worse.

You WILL get through this. But, it will probably take time.

Let us know how you are doing.

Katherine

[geneva]

I have found that emotional lows as well as HIGHS can bring on symptoms so when you doctor told you his view of your condition you were probably so excited that at least figurately you were doing cartwheels! Excitement, like negative stress, can cause an increase in ANS instability. Crazy, I know, but true.

Hang in there! And, give yourself time to get better.

[Gwem]

Hi "Very Blue,"

I just wanted to let you know that I'm 20 and I also have experienced an extreme drop in my blood pressure...it's gone as low as 70/60 and my heart rate has ranomdly plummeted into the 30's from the 60's. In general though, I have low BP, however....I have had heart monitor's, EKG's etc. and also recently had 2 tilt table tests..In my circumstance,( i don't know if this will ease your concern but i hope so!)the test results showed that what i have is Dysautonomia, in other words, my vagus nerve is causing the drop in heart rate and blood pressure...therefore i did not need a pace maker (which my cardiologist had thought i did need.) Since this is an autonomic nervous system disfunction my doctors now have to try to figure out a "cocktail" of different medications to help control the drops in BP and Heart rate, as well as figure out what will help the other symptoms i experience with my dysautonomia, GI problems, coldness, thyroid stuff etc. I hope that knowing there is another young adult out there going through the same kinda thing may help. feel free to e-mail me if you need to vent or chat about it. Also there is an organization that helped me a lot , which i would not have found had it not been for DINET the organization is called DYNA..it's for kids and young adults going through POTS, Dysautonomia type symtpoms. www.dynakids.org