You (if there is a "you" anymore for this blog) will not likely be surprised to learn that I have returned to blogging only because I am stuck at home. You will also likely assume that I am stuck at home because of medical complications. As it happens, you are right.
Postural tachycardia syndrome (POTS) and neurally mediated hypotension (NMH) are at it again, those rascally disorders responsible for such hilarious hijinks as "In the ER Again" and "Passed Out on the Pavement"! They're back and better than ever, this time sending me home from college early with incompletes in all of my classes. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm used to this stuff! I was expelled from my high school because of this stuff. I spent a year not leaving my house because of this stuff. I went to community college for a year because of this stuff. This stuff didn't jump out from behind the shrubbery and surprise me one foggy evening.
Excluding the element of surprise, though, does not make POTS and NMH significantly more manageable. For whatever reason, no matter how many times I explain to the paramedic that I KNOW what's wrong with me, and I DON'T need to go to the hospital, they never seem to trust the trembling eighteen year-old that is lying on the floor of the classroom that they arrived to find unconscious and convulsing. Go figure.
What all of this means, and what I'm getting to, is that I'm back and at it again-- new medications! After altering the dosage of something I'm already on (Florinef), it has been determined that new and different classes of medications will be required to treat my symptoms. That's where Norpace comes in.
Norpace is an antiarrhythmic drug that works by blocking certain signals to the heart that may cause it to beat abnormally fast. It's kind of an intense drug, usually administered in hospitals to patients with life-threatening ventrical tachycardia. It is not recommended for minor conditions. It is not designed to treat the conditions that I posses. It can (rarely) cause congestive heart failure since it, you know, is messing with the heart and its beating. Naturally, I am totally excited to start this medication.
I mean it!I am! Even though new drugs often result in my inability to eat solid foods, sleep, and walk around the house, I am absolutely, legitimately excited to start messing with meds again. In a strange way, I really do enjoy seeing my doctors at Hopkins. Dr. Peter Rowe (my cardiologist) is very possibly the most brilliant and kind physician I have ever had the privilege of working with, not to mention his delightfully sharp wit. I end up feeling very honored to be seen by a doctor who spends his time researching, lecturing, and practicing on some of the most interesting and complicated medical cases in the country. It is even more exciting for me to be prescribed drugs whose effects on me may assist his research and understanding of medicine. I feel terribly important. And, as they always say, self-importance is the best medicine.
Kind of.
