You'll notice, the one that you have loved in dreams is here among the others
I had my Tilt test today, and I flunked it big time.
We were off to a bad start as soon as I was lying on the table and the nurse put a tourniquet on so she could find my vein for the IV. I warned her that my veins are often hard to find. The tourniquet didn't feel tight enough for her to target the vein well, and she didn't. My naughty veins scrambled all over in an effort to avoid the needle. Damn veins. She poked and dug about five times without the needle ever "sticking." I couldn't watch her, so I had my head turned away and I watched my EKG instead. I was suprised that my heart rate didn't jump as I got more nervous about the digging. I was having flashbacks of being six years old and having the nurses stab me 27 times in the arm because my veins had collapsed from dehydration. I should have a needle-phobia after all of this, but I don't. I just have a digging-around-under-the-skin-chasing-the-vein phobia.
The nurse called in reinforcements. I suggested using a smaller needle. She said she was using the smallest one that would still be effective in getting the liquids to me. Nurse number two went to work on the same arm (I was sort of hoping we'd start fresh -- maybe the veins on the other arm aren't as skittish). It took her two jab/digs and then a long sting and lots of tape but she got the IV in there.
Then I got seatbelted in and tilted up. I felt dizzy and told them that. My heart-rate went up. My blood pressure went down. And down. And down. I told them I thought I was going to be sick. The nurse asked the nurse practitioner if they should lay me back down again. It seemed to take her way too long to decide, but it was probably only a matter of seconds. I was scared I was going to faint right there in those stupid seatbelts. They lowered me flat again. It took me a long time lying on my back before my body started to feel normal again -- before the tingling in my arms stopped, before the sweat on my face cooled. Tilt tests are supposed to have you upright for 30 minutes to 45 minutes, so I was terrified they were going to tilt me up again as soon as I'd recovered so they could meet some sort of quota. I may have recovered more quickly if I'd realized there was no tilt quota. When the nurse practitioner left, I realized it was done.
My body could only cut it standing still for five minutes. Before the test, one of the nurse's told me that "99.9% of the time this is a really boring test and you just stand there looking at the wall for half an hour." After the test, she said, "Well, I guess you're that .1%."
I wish P.O.T.S. didn't have such a stupid acronym and such a hard to pronounce full name. Apparently one in every 100 people has this, but I feel like I'm the only one. There aren't any LJ communities or books about it, so therefore it must not really exist.
I only worked a little over three hours today, and all from home, but I'm exhausted. Maybe trying not to faint is hard work. Maybe it's just the grieving, which I know is hard work. I remember how I couldn't stop sleeping after great grandma died. Today what happened yesterday is starting to sink in. I cried while I read the articles Joe sent me, but I was glad that someone else knew this tiny town that wasn't even on the map before this. The names of the deceased kids were released today.
Someone whose opinion I trust told me I shouldn't be alone tonight. And I thought, Oh God, you want me to deal with all of this AND deal with having people around? But I understand where she was coming from. But I'm just not at that level with my friends here. I need to trust the friends I've had forever and start opening up to them, first. And my apartment is a mess, and I really can't bear to have people see it when it's a mess. I can barely stand to be here when it's a mess. And when she told me to "treat myself well," tonight I thought, "I can't feel well until my apartment is clean." Yes, I know I make excuses. But how do you tell someone, "Hey, we've been friends for six months, and now a bunch of little kids from my hometown are dead or in the hospital and I've got some freaky syndrome, wanna come over?"
I'm going to watch the eclipse from my bed. I love those windows. And I'm going to eat hashbrowns with lots of salt and ketchup.