#they put me on amitriptyline for sleep and to see if it helps my MALS pain

[horce-divorce]

Holy shit seconding that, i am so so sorry about your grandma. I've heard a lot of people take to calling POTS a salt deficiency when they don't want to explain why they need so much.

My cardiologist told me himself that the normal sodium intake is 2-3g per day and I should shoot for 6-12g. Of sodium. Per day. Just me. 6 to 12 GRAMS. Per DAY.

I usually drink 1-2 liquid IVs per day, plus eating a high sodium diet, adding salt to everything I eat (including my water!), and I still don't get enough salt, and I can FEEL IT, especially during times when I don't have enough (or when I've just woken up and am dehydrated).

But also adding that yeah the tachycardia is not only a staple symptom, dysautonomia can cause your heart to stop. Dysautonomia meaning dysfunction of the autonomic nervous symptom, ie processes that SHOULD be automatic to you- heart rate, breathing, sleep, digestion etc. If you're forced to do a tilt table test, part of the reason they do it is specifically to see how bad they can make you crash to prove its POTS, and if you have a hard enough dysautonomic crash your heart can stop. (TTT is barbaric and unnecessary IMHO but I thought this was worth mentioning.)

I don't say that to alarm anyone, but I've also seen a lot of people who either think it's just 'PoTS' without knowing what that means, or who know the acronym but don't understand that it's multiple autonomic functions that are affected, not merely your heart rate. When I first had it mentioned to me, I dismissed it myself because I thought it was 'just tachycardia' and 'it didn't bother me.' Fast forward 10 years and uncountable medical tests later, I've realized POTS is the main thing that disables me, and not just with having a resting HR of over 100.

And it is NOT rare. Doctors have told me for a decade that it's too rare for them to even bother educating themselves about, and now the numbers have surged thanks to COVID. I got mine from swine flu but as mentioned above, there are other things that can cause it!

Anyway, we need better education about "rare disorders" to begin with, but POTS is becoming so common there's no excuse for Doctors not to familiarize themselves anymore. I admit i dont know which type of POTS i have, but I'm fairly certain that regardless of which type, telling someone with it to go no sodium... That's straight up medical malpractice. I'm so sorry.

I definitely overdid it yesterday. The Exhaustion is real. I forgot just because my heart wasn't bounding out of my ribcage, I'm still a bitch with chronic fatigue.

But I'm a chronically fatigued bitch with a resting heart rate of 68, so I'll take it.