Once you lose hope, you lost your battle

It has been a while since my last post. The past few months have been going really well since my symptoms have gotten more under control. There have been a few bumps in the road during the summer, but the new obstacle that has come up is my extremely depleted iron.  On Thanksgiving, my body began to get really achy, which I have never experienced before. As the day went on, the aches kept getting worse, and by the afternoon I ended up passing out and going to the hospital. I figured they would give me fluids and I would go back home to eat some (gluten-free) pumpkin pie. Usually after one bag of fluids I feel much better, but my heart continued to race, I was still achy, and still very potsie. I was kept overnight and they continued to give me fluids, which was not helping. The next day they took some blood work and found that my iron was severely depleted, and my electrolytes were on the low end of the spectrum. After coming home from the hospital, I still wasn’t feeling great and stayed home from school for a week. I was given prescription iron supplements and ate a high iron diet, but I am still extremely fatigued. Since being in the hospital, my symptoms have not improved. I have days where I feel a little better, but for the past two weeks it has been rough. I am weak, exhausted, and do not have the energy to do anything.

It’s anxiety provoking to have setbacks when you have been doing well for so many months. POTS is like a roller coaster, you will have months of controlled symptoms and then all of a sudden there can be a drop. It’s the downfalls where you have to be strong. It’s easy to give in to symptoms and give up. The day after I left the hospital, I was so upset that I was having a relapse and I was ready to stop going to school and give up. My mom reminded me of how far I’ve come and how far I still have to go. POTS is a life long journey of ups and downs, you never know when you will have a flare or when a cold can turn into a relapse. It’s easy to fall into the cycle of always fearing the worst, of always being paranoid that that single sneeze will cause full-blown autonomic failure. I am typically not a half glass full kind of person. I usually look at things from a more pessimistic point of view because I hate disappointment and like to be realistic. Throughout the past two years, I realized I couldn’t handle POTS like I’ve handled other things. You need to be optimistic and enjoy the little things in life. It’s very easy to fall into a black hole of desperation; it’s easy to look at how terrible it is to be stuck with a chronic illness, but you need to find your source of light. I found my source of light through my family. Having a big family with 5 nieces and nephews has really helped me get through the obstacles.  My sister texted me a few days after getting out of the hospital and told me my nephew said that they should get me comfy pjs for Christmas because the doctor said I need to stay warm. Its small things like this that make me keep pushing through the symptoms and try to live a normal life.

Hope is an important factor when living with a chronic illness. Once you lose hope, you lost your battle. I’ve learned that hope and determination are the two most important factors that will get you through anything. There will always be downfalls in whatever you do, but you have to hold on to the hope that you will get better and will live a normal life. You have to be determined to fight through your symptoms no matter how tired or weak you are. It is easy to give up, but the easy way out will never get you anywhere. Sometimes when I start to lose hope, I picture happy things and a bright future. I have days where I feel like I can’t do it anymore and days where I question why I am pre-med since what are the chances of being a good doctor when my health is not under control. It’s those days that I take a deep breathe and remember why I want to be a doctor. I want to be a better person; a person that can help sick people and a doctor that I wish I had. I want to be a doctor that doesn’t give up on her patients and helps them fight through the bad days. Sometimes you don’t achieve your goals, but without goals, what are you living for? I have ambitious goals and my goals of becoming a doctor has helped me fight through the bad days and will continue to help me fight through my symptoms.