Learning to laugh at myself

The other day I mentioned that I did 3 things to prevent living with POTS from turning me into an angry, cynical person . (PS It was an Umbrella! Umbrella! day today. Please forgive typos and poor sentence structure. Hoping to work on that with this blog.)

Thing #1 - Watch, read, take note of stories of other people (or cute puppies) overcoming challenges.
Thing #2- Learning to laugh at myself.
Thing #3- To be revealed later. Get excited.

Learning to laugh at myself:
I'm a volunteer clinical instructor at my dental school. It's so much fun, the students like me, I like the students, I teach them stuff, lovely.

Confession: It's been a week since I could make it in to teach, despite living 6 blocks away. Thus is POTS.

The silly part is, it wasn't for lack of trying. In fact, I've gotten fully dressed every morning and I have been ready to get out the door on time. However, I'm so thoroughly exhausted getting ready each morning I end up resting all morning despite being ready to walk out the door.

And then I snicker at my predicament.

If I walked to the school in my PJs, with dragon breath, and messy hair, perhaps I'd have enough energy to get there. However, I imagine a dentist teaching would-be dentists to be dentists without brushing her teeth wouldn't go over well. I guess that's why I'm exercising everyday. So I have enough strength to brush my teeth AND go teach.

It's also a good thing I'm not crucial to the functioning of the operative dentistry course. And I'm a volunteer.

Exercise update:
Still exercising! Haven't missed a day yet.

Today was recumbent bike for 30 minutes. As I was a pedaling I thought, "why are my arms getting tired while I'm biking?!"  And then I realized, "Oh yeah, I'm reading a book."

For the record I did NOT think "Why is my heart pounding when I'm biking super slow?"

"Oh yeah I have POTS" ;)

For those curious, I'm reading World Without Endby Ken Follett, It's 1014 pages.