Miriam

Hey, my name is Miriam, I’m 35 years old, I’m not from the UK, I want to share my experience from Perú.

I’ve struggled all my life with feeling sick when standing too long, or any activity when it’s hot outside, but after I got COVID it all got worse. I wasn’t able to walk a block before feeling like I was going to faint. I’m a surgeon, each day at work was a challenge, just struggling to finish a surgery before fainting, or learning to alternate between sitting and standing just not to faint.

Getting diagnosed here was horrible. I also suffer from insulin resistance, and my endocrinologist just told me “you’re depressed“, “it’s probably your period”, or the classic “your anxious because you’re a woman”.

I’ve struggled with all this for more than a year, trying not to leave home because I was scared of going out. Until I found a new endocrinologist, who referred me to a cardiologist who specialised in electrophysiology. The fact that he just listened and believed me was so huge for me. After I got diagnosed with PoTS, I started with lifestyle changes like drinking more than 2 litres of water a day, regular exercise, and then taking Ivabradine, which made a huge improvement to me.

Now I only need medicine at some periods, and my fainting has decreased enormously. I can have an almost normal life. It’s still hard to fight against it, especially because to everyone else I don’t ‘look’ sick, but it’s a “one a day at a time fight”.

I hope this helps someone, just to know that you’re not alone fighting against this!