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.

Why I didn't fall into dispair when I first got diagnosed.

I imagine to an outsider observing me when I first got diagnosed with POTS, I seemed pretty pathetic.  If I walked any faster than an elderly shuffle, my heart would go so fast I would pass out. And I was only 25! I remember just standing in the middle of a hallway because I was too exhausted to take another step.

I was pissed. I had JUST graduated from dental school and I had no idea if my body would even let me make it down a hallway.

I had good reason to be upset. No one gets a debilitating illness from left field with no clear cure, and immediately goes all Pollyanna.

However.


I also realized that if this was my lot for the time being, I didn't want to go around be angry with the world. So I did 3 things. I'll talk about the other 2 later.

1st thing was to watch and read about overcoming challenges. Sounds trite, but it was awesome for the soul. For instance, Dogtown on instant viewing Netflix totally saved me that 1st month. It's about these dogs who have bad injuries or behavior problems who get placed at a no kill shelter. And they get better! Or learn to deal with missing a leg! Or survive a brutal attack, heal and get adopted by cute families! Hurray!

If these sweet animals have a shot at healing, perhaps I do too.

(Definitely beat watching 24 where any minor character Jack Bauer encounters dies!  Cute doggies get better or imminent death and destruction? )


Exercise update:
I felt pretty icky today so I hadn't true cardio by the time my husband got home. He's pretty supportive and said he'd go down to the gym with me and we could put in 30 minutes together.

Wed is 30 minutes on the recumbent bike again, and thanks to my husband I got it done. Still felt my legs get jello-y at minute 10. By minute 23, I realized "huh, I feel as if I am on a boat." And then I realized "it appears I'm feeling dizzy." Furtively glance over to husband to see if he notices. "Good, he didn't notice." 6 minutes left.

"Slow down girl, we got this." (I talk to myself as a dualistic being when giving myself a pep talk.)

Why this?

Tomorrow is a big day.  I'm on a mission to get my strength back.

This all started when my husband decided to do a presentation on my illness for his medical school class. In reading up on the most recent scientific articles on POTS he found this beauty. After 3 months, 53% of the POTS patients who underwent this exercise therapy no longer met the clinical criteria for POTS. That is, the change in heart rate from sitting to standing did not increase more than 30 beats per minute for the 53%.

Interesting.

Every. Single. Person. Who completed this study reported an increase in quality of life. It didn't matter how severe or mild the POTS.

The last 11 months, my body has pooped out on me. I felt like I was in a video game where my character had the wimpiest energy bar and got left behind.  I'd rather not live the rest of my life like that. If doing a graduated exercise regimen means I will feel better, then I'll do it.

So here's the deal:
MWF  recumbant bike for 30 minutes.  Start slow and with little resistance.
T/TH leg strengthening with wieghts for 30 minutes.
S/S I can relax

I'll fill you in on how things go tomorrow. In the meantime, here's some pump up music. I wanna be able to rock out at a concert again.