Thread by @acrossthemersey

I decided to see a cardiologist recently was because I’d been getting these really weird dizzy-headaches and knowing so many people with POTS, I figured that’s what was happening to me.

During my initial exam, he said the funniest thing. “POTS is such a bullshit diagnosis.”

He said it with such exasperation and I actually laughed (iykyk) and he said “don’t get me wrong, I treat it all the time but it’s a bullshit name, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not one thing and all my patients are different. We don’t know what causes it, we know …”

“We know it’s a disorder of the autonomic nervous system. But it’s not one thing and I have to prescribe something different for everyone.”

He also said he doesn’t like the tilt table test which I found interesting to hear seeing how many people struggle with that.

Anyway, he said in my initial after examining me that I don’t have POTS thankfully and after all the tests I saw him again yesterday and he ruled it out along with anything to do with my heart but I mentioned some of the meds I see people taking and we chatted for 15 mins ..

So I said I know so many people with POTS and he said he’s getting a lot more and they all have LongCOVID and he once again said “it’s a bullshit diagnosis, it’s just like LongCOVID, it’s not one thing and we don’t really know what causes it specifically.”

This whole conversation is like music to my ears because LongCOVID is not one thing. There are over 200 symptoms and every organ in the body is affected, with everyone different. Yet it seems like there are people who force the issue that it’s all one thing or the other.

It’s a very minimizing thing to say or do to be honest and I see it a lot. I frequently post about a lot of my journey and experiences and I’ll often get really low key offensive responses from people asserting something else and I’ll never really understand why.