In February 2019, I came down with just about the worst cold in the world — sniffling, sneezing, coughing, the whole shebang. For two whole weeks, I broke our budget on tissues and Vicks VapoRub until my nose, and my wallet, finally dried up.

Of course, I was elated to wake up one morning with nothing but a lingering cough, ready to take on the world once more. But, what I didn’t know was that this was only the beginning…

A Pesky, Little Cough

See, that little lingering cough led me straight to the emergency room. The left side of my ribcage felt like it was being stabbed with a knife and when I laid down, it felt as though a grown man was standing on top of my chest. In all seriousness, I thought I was about to have a heart attack.

After an EKG, some blood work, a chest x-ray, and a bunch of questions about my mental health, I was sent home with nothing more than a torso covered in electrode stickies and a pamphlet about anxiety.

But guess what? That pamphlet did nothing to get rid of my symtoms. The pain inside my chest only got worse and I got pretty good at sleeping in an upright position.

My mom and my husband did their best to reassure me that the doctors knew what they were talking about — I just needed to “relax and clear my head“. But I knew my anxiety better than them, and whatever this was, it wasn’t anxiety.

I went back to the emergency room twice more, and each time, it ended the same. “It’s all in your head. You need to go home.” I felt totally ashamed — maybe I was just crazy.

A Major Breakthrough

Weeks later, after the pain subsided, I had my GP refer me to a cardiologist who, after reviewing the x-rays the ER had done, revealed to me that I likely had pleurisy, inflammation of the tissues that line the lungs and chest cavity. Finally, an answer.

It Didn’t End There

After a few months of feeling relatively good, things started to go downhill again. I was getting dizzy when I stood up, I got random pains in my chest, and my heart rate would skyrocket with minimal exertion.

I explained these new symptoms to my friends and family, and every single person I talked to chalked it up to anxiety. Didn’t anyone learn anything from the whole pleurisy ordeal?!

I continued to develop strange, new symptoms for an entire year, and still, no one believed a word I said. It’s just anxiety.

Thank You, Internet

One day, at work, I was watching Youtube videos (don’t worry, it was during my lunch break) when I stumbled upon a video of girl with a multitude of chronic illnesses. She mentioned that she had POTS, and out of curiosity, I looked it up.

I read that POTS, or Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, is a form of Dysautonomia. Essentially, the autonomic nervous system has trouble directing blood flow with postural changes, forcing the heart to work extra hard.

POTS comes with a whole slew of symtoms, including:

• Chest pain
• Dizziness
• Headaches
• Heart palpitations
• Light-headedness
• Shortness of breath
• Fast heart rate
• And much, much more

I could almost tick off every checkbox on that long list of symptoms, and I immediately sent some articles to my doctor. And, after a check-up and a few very specific tests, I at last had my diagnosis.

Trust Your Gut

The thing about Dysautonomia is that we don’t exactly know what causes it. However, a lot of people will show signs of it after having some sort of serious trauma or illness *cough* pleurisy *cough*.

See, if my ER doctors had really listened to me, perhaps the pleurisy would have been treated and I would have never developed POTS.

The moral of the story? Trust your gut — don’t let anyone tell you that you’re fine when you know you’re not. Keep fighting and hang in there!