Have you ever been to so many doctors and emergency room visits that you begin to feel like you should live in a hospital just so you don't have to make another trip? That is how I felt for the last three years of my life. Hi, my name is Sarah, and I am a member of DYNA. I am 20 years old, and I live in Ohio. I was diagnosed with POTS in October of 2001 at the age of 19. This is my story of the struggles I have had to deal with for the last three years.

     During my sophomore year in high school, I started to get really tired all the time and nauseated. My family doctor just said it was because I was growing and the symptoms would go away in awhile. That is not what happened at all I went from being tired to sleeping almost the entire day away. My life consisted of going to school, coming home at 3:00pm and falling asleep until dinner and then going back to sleep immediately following dinner. This was not exactly the way I had envisioned spending my high school years.

     That was just the beginning of a nightmare. By the end of my sophomore year, I had become so nauseated all the time that I could not eat. Eating food made me sick and even just the sight of food seemed to make my stomach go into spasms. As an athlete you have to eat to keep your energy up, this was not happening for me, so my sports suffered and so did I. I started to look really bad, and people started to say I had anorexia or I was bulimic, even my parents started to think so. This whole time my doctor could not find anything wrong with me, yet I knew something was.

     The rest of my high school years slipped past me either while I was in a fog or sleeping. I had stopped growing but the symptoms had not disappeared, in reality they seemed to get worse. I made plenty of emergency room visits over the next year or so with severe stomachaches, each time the tests came back negative. Nothing was wrong with me, so why was I still feeling sick? My family doctor would send me for tests of all sorts from Upper GI testing, to lower GI tests, I had them all and yet they all came back negative.

     As I started college at Miami University of Ohio, I thought things were going to be ok. I had started to put some weight back on, and I was sleeping in a more normal pattern. I was getting my life back, so I thought. After just a few days at college I started having symptoms all over again. I was not able to keep food down, and I was not able to sleep, I had insomnia. This went on for the entire semester and ended with a trip to the ER because I was fainting and seeing double. That was the beginning of a break through.

     After that semester at Miami I moved back home with my parents to start going to school at the University of Toledo. This was the smartest decision I have ever made. While attending classes during the fall semester I started to get really symptomatic, migraines, racing heart and fainting continuously. The only thing was I was being symptomatic with no one around except my parents and some close family friends. Each time we would go to the ER my symptoms would subside and they would tell my family and me that I was crazy and faking all the symptoms. This was getting very annoying since I knew that I was not faking and I was not crazy.

     On one of my many monthly visits to the family doctor she asked if she could put me through just one more test, a tilt table. What did I have to lose? I had all the other tests that the medical field administers-one more was not going to kill me. This test was the best thing to happen to me in the last three years. They finally told me what I knew from the beginning I WAS SICK- I had POTS. Even though neither my family nor myself knew what POTS was it was just a relief to know that something was wrong and I wasn't crazy!!

     It has been about six months since we were told what was wrong with me. I have had good days and bad days but that is to be expected when you have POTS. We are still currently searching for the right medicines to help with my symptoms. I know that we will find it sooner or later. But, until that day comes we will just take life one minute at a time. This time would be unbearable if it were not for DYNA. Since finding DYNA, I have been able to talk to other kids that have POTS and other dysautonomia conditions and learn that I am not alone. It is really great to be able to know others with the same kind of conditions, because most people think you are a freak and don't want to be your friend once they find out about your condition. Without the support and love of my parents I do not know how I would have made it through these hard times, losing friends, weird unexplainable episodes and the relief of finding out what is wrong. I know that many of the kids with dysautonomia conditions feel the same way. Thank you moms and dads for everything you do.