It started on a July morning. The sun was beating on my back as I brought out breakfast to my extended family, still groggy and not fully awake. I sat down to continue our conversation about the beautiful weather, work, school, or something along those lines. I slowly finished my breakfast and suddenly a strange feeling took over my body -- the world seemed like it was spinning. I unsteadily walked inside to lie down as my family interrogated, full of worry. Little did I know that this feeling would soon take over my everyday life.

I began wearing my Fitbit soon after I visited the doctor and had my first EKG, learning I had a heart murmur and arrhythmia. I felt it was necessary to keep track of my heart rate as these strange spells kept occuring. It previously was my sister’s, but she had no use for it anymore so she kindly let me keep it. I felt like a machine -- I wore my FitBit along with a cardiac event monitor stuck to my chest by irritatingly sticky electrodes for two weeks. Any time I felt a symptom I had to press a button on the monitor and check my heart rate, as if workers behind computers were watching my every move. Day by day it seemed as if I were getting worse. I’d wake up feeling just fine and by the end of the day it felt as if I had run a marathon when in reality I was stuck laying down on my couch all day.

The suffocating, debilitating symptoms slowly became too much to bare. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was so sick of feeling this way constantly; forgetting about it or ignoring it weren’t nearly options. I got in the car with my mom around 10:00 pm about a week after my initial doctor’s appointment and soon began the agonizing ten minute drive to the hospital. I sat uncomfortably, trying and trying to get a deep breath in but it did me no good. We finally arrived at the hospital after what seemed like hours of driving. I held my mom’s hand as I slowly crossed the cold concrete and made my way to the doors of the ER.  Heart beating out of my chest and squeezing my mom’s hand, I walked through the sliding doors. A cold gust of air blew past me like a snowstorm. I’ve never liked hospitals, yet the odd and unsettling hospital-scent had become all too familiar. Worry rushed over me as I crossed the linoleum floor towards the front desk. A nurse with a sweet voice questioned me and I shakily responded. I soon was told to enter a small cubicle with a young nurse who began asking me the same questions I knew too well, over and over again. Soon after I was led from the boring, eerie entrance of the ER to the much more vibrant and colorful children’s section. They had me lie down and attached me to even more machines -- the all too familiar feeling of electrode patches being strapped to my chest and a blood pressure cuff wrestling my upper arm every few minutes. Hours passed staring at the ceiling as I met endless nurses, doctors, residents. Blood work, x-rays, repetitive and redundant questions. Still no answers.

Weeks passed after my ER visit and finally the day of my echocardiogram had arrived. I was much less nervous to be at the hospital this time. I followed the endless hallways with my mother clinging to my hand, anxious to see where I’d be visiting this time. We came down the final hallway to a door that led to a colorful, adorably decorated waiting room with toys everywhere and some kids’ show playing on the television. I pondered what I was about to get myself into. Finally, after waiting and filling out endless paperwork, it was time for my chest ultrasound. I dressed in a hospital gown and soon enough I felt the cool blue gel being spread around my upper chest by the transducer probe. I was told it would be painless beforehand. I soon realized that that was not true as the probe was pressed into the top of my sternum and underneath my ribs so that ultrasound technician could view my heart from the top and bottom. I squeezed my mother’s hand in pain as she and the technician promised that the pain would be over soon.

After what seemed like ages, the echocardiogram was finished. I dressed in my normal clothes and followed a nurse to a small exam room. The room was boring but the view from the window was beautiful, which didn’t surprise me considering we were on the seventh floor of the hospital. Soon after a resident/medical student came in and began asking me the same questions I had been asked by at least 10 doctors, nurses, and residents. We talked for quite a while before he finally left to discuss my symptoms with the doctor. My orthostatics were then taken by another nurse who helped try to pass the time. After my blood pressure was taken from laying down to standing up, I returned to my exam room and waited for hours to get back some results. Finally, I met my cardiologist -- a sweet, incredibly intelligent young lady with a slight accent from what seemed like an African country. She was tall and dressed very professionally, along with her bright white lab coat. She got right to the point when she entered the room, informing me and my mother that I have a condition called POTS -- postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. As she continued to explain what it meant and gave me more information about it, feelings of confusion yet satisfaction at the same time took over. Me and my mother left that appointment in a different state of mind.

My mother has always been the one person I hold nearest and dearest to my heart. She has large, dark, loving eyes and a warm smile, and a soft yet powerful voice. She is the image of home to me and there’s nobody I would rather spend all my time with. She may get frustrated with me and I may do the same but in the end she’s all I have; she’s my rock. She has thought for a long time that my diagnosis was wrong, and it’s always been a bit discouraging and confusing. All my symptoms matched up with POTS but she still wouldn’t believe it. I felt satisfied with the diagnosis but something still seemed off to her.

Since then, my symptoms have been very on and off. I ended up getting really sick the week before my next cardiologist appointment and tried taking some Benadryl to help my symptoms, which was an extremely bad choice. I was warned previously to be careful when taking certain medicine because it could make my body react very badly, but I wasn’t worried about taking the Benadryl. The reaction I had from it scared me away from ever taking over-the-counter medicine without consulting my doctor first. The reaction took place in the middle of the school day -- during choir to be exact. I began to feel a little woozy and dizzy, not paying any mind to it because I normally felt this way. As I sat through class longer and longer, the feeling grew and my symptoms got worse. I began to feel my heart beating out of my chest. Feelings of anxiety mixed with endless physical symptoms overwhelmed my body as I struggled to catch my breath. The world spun as I tried to focus on the sound of my teacher's voice. I finally pressed the small button on the side of my Fitbit revealing my heart rate surpassing numbers I didn't even know it could. The pressure in my chest mixed with lightheadedness and the weakness in my knees took over my body. I rushed to the nurse and words caught in my throat as I tried to spit out a single sentence. Once again my fingers squeezed the small button as I sat down in the chillingly cold nurse's office revealing my heart rate -- no change from before. I closed my eyes and took deep breaths as I tried to somehow force the world around me to stop spinning.

My next cardiologist appointment went exactly as I planned it would -- he told me that the symptoms are “just anxiety” and “all in my head.” There was not much I could say or do about it considering the cardiologist was my uncle, but when me and my mother went back into the car after the appointment, I had a bit of a mental breakdown. I cried and cried, I was so sick of being told that it wasn’t real, that something wasn’t physically wrong with me. This just pushed me over the edge. I had already heard it enough from my mother and this just made it so much worse. Thankfully, I ended up seeing my original cardiologist about a week after for my follow-up appointment, and that is a whole different story.

At the moment, my diagnosis is a bit fuzzy. My orthostatics didn’t match up with those of a POTS patient at the last cardiologist appointment, so something is clearly wrong. It has been quite a journey these past few months trying to figure out what is wrong with me, and the story still isn’t over. There are tons of details I left out of this, too. For the time being, I’m taking the best care of myself that I can and learning how to cope with a medical condition that can be so all-over-the-place, and learning how to stop being afraid to ask people for things that I need to help me. Hopefully the day will come soon where the confusion ends and the treatment begins.