SabrinaMedina

Hello! I'm sorry that you had to experience the carbon monoxide exposure, but grateful that you found the leak! I created a dinet.org account specifically to respond to your post, because I too had exposure like this and later got a POTS diagnosis. I live with my parents in their home, and I took a break from working to sort out issues with endometriosis in 2013. Soon I began to notice that despite all of my efforts to feel better, I just kept feeling worse in all sorts of weird ways! I felt like I was going crazy because all doctor's test results would come back normal, yet I was suffering with headaches, extreme fatigue, muscle soreness, shortness of breath (as if I were being suffocated), tachycardia, dizziness/lightheadedness, and gastrointestinal distress. My only clue was that I had an abnormally high red blood cell count (my body was trying to compensate for the lack of oxygen). Then I realized that our gas powered washing machine and dryer were ventilating directly into the house!!! An Xcel energy worker was sent out and measured the carbon monoxide being released from all of our appliances and found that our water heater and oven were also releasing ridiculously unsafe amounts...and that our detector was broken! That was in 2015, and I thought fixing the problem would make me feel so much better, but I've continued to feel a lot of the same kind of symptoms. I was diagnosed with POTS in 2016, so the symptoms make sense, but I wish they would go away! I don't believe I had Dysautonomia before the carbon monoxide exposure, I also developed Celiac disease after it, so I'm just a mess! There's not enough research on the effects of low level (non-lethal) exposure to carbon monoxide, but I think it can wreak havoc on our bodies!