POTS, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia
08 September 2024
My family were always hugely into visiting mountains: hiking, skiing, and so on. We spent a good chunk of our weekends in the mountains. Catch is, at age 11, I had sudden onset altitude sickness. I would sometimes throw up. I always felt nauseated when we got above about 4,000 feet. I gasped for air before other people did.
In physical education class in ninth grade, we had to do a six-minute run walk on a particularly smoggy day. I came in second to last, only ahead of the kid with crutches. I felt like I couldn’t get enough air.
Over the years, it slowly worsened. My college required a speech class in order to graduate. I enrolled in it 7 times before I was finally able to finish. While I did have a normal human amount of fear of public speaking, most of my issue wasn’t that at all.
It was simply having to stand for five minutes.