Courage and dysautonomia

To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Courage is not the absence of fear but the ability to act in spite of it."

When you have dysautonomia, having courage is a given because it can bring much fear into your life.  When you don't know how your body is going to behave, it can be a terrifying and anxiety ridden experience to go anywhere in public.  My own personal outings have included collapsing alone in a Walmart, sitting almost prone in work meetings because I was so dizzy I could hardly sit upright or stay conscious, and not being able to leave an event because became I too weak.  These are all humiliating experiences and real confidence busters for going out! 

This week, I'm switching medicines for the fourth time since my current protocol isn't working well.  It took me a week to work up my courage to do this.  Every time I try a new medicine or withdraw from one, it causes an immediate 2 week period of complete collapse followed by a slow recovery.  Extreme dizziness, fatigue (where it feels like gravity is 100x greater than normal is pulling down on my body), and stomach issues (vomiting, etc) are the norm for me during each medicine trial.  To get out of bed is an ordeal and I usually have to crawl to get from room to room.  This makes is extremely discouraging to keep trying things to say the least.

All this has also wreaked havoc on my job which creates more fear.  And then there's the fear of never getting better, the fear that friends will tire of you, etc.  The list of fears can be endless and overwhelming. 

It just occurred to me that having POTS is like it's Halloween every day!  :-)  (because of the fear...)  I know, another bad joke. 

So I come back to Mark Twain's quote about courage.  I think to live successfully with POTS you have to learn to accept living with fear, but you don't have to let it defeat you.  Living with POTS takes courage, lots of it!  In terms of POTS, I think of courage as being to get out of bed on a morning when you have extreme vertigo.  Courage can be taking a single step, or maybe on a good day, courage can be making a short trip to a grocery store. 

In other words, courage with POTS is really just carrying on with life sometimes.  POTS sucks... there you have it, and it causes all kinds of fears.  But this is the life I have to live and I choose to get up every day no matter how bad the day and do as much as I can each day.  I also try to find something every day to be thankful for, no matter how small.  Today I saw a hummingbird moth and I took it as a sign that tomorrow will be a better day.  Probably wishful thinking but it's OK to indulge in wishful thinking.  :-)

My wish for anyone living with POTS would be for it to disappear!  But if it won't, I wish you the best day you can possibly have each day and applaud your courage in living with dysautonomia.