The Salt of Life

10/10/2024
MY JOURNEY WITH A CHRONIC ILLNESS
HOW IT STARTED

HOW ITS GOING

So, I’ll just say what I have in the beginning. POTS. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. You may not have heard about it, but it’s a type of dysautonomia. Now, I promise you don’t need to study medical books to follow along with these posts; I’ll break it down for you guys. You deserve to understand.

Dysautonomia is when your automatic nervous system isn’t working like it should. This system controls the things you don’t, like breathing, blood pressure, and heartbeat.
So when it isn’t working, you can run into problems. You can’t exactly knock on your ribcage and ask your heart to stop having an argument with your blood pressure.
Instead, you have to hold onto something and ride it out, feeling like you held your breath for too long. What triggered this? All you did was stand up.

There’s a possibility that I have had POTS for a lot longer than I thought. I have told my mom I saw purple static when I stood too fast for years. What led me down the path of this diagnosis was actually balance issues that affected my work.

See, I was a dog bather. Someone who doesn’t do the cute haircuts or makes your dog go from a matted mop to a fresh canine. I was the one who took your husky with a thousand fur tufts sticking out to a manageable floof. The pitties, the golden retievers, they were most of my appointments.

Now, I loved my job, even though it sometimes beat me up in body and mind. It was a punishing rush. A dog done each hour, going back and forth between giant dogs, and that was the normal duties. Dealing with walk-ins interrupting your flow was almost worse, but I did my best.
I loved on the pups that needed it, went slow where I could with anxious pups. Some dogs needed a firm hug for their nails, which my vet assistant skills helped quite a bit.
My time management was always coming up in reviews, but I did my best and loved my furry clients, and it showed.
My body eventually let me know I couldn’t keep doing this. I told my mom I needed to see my regular doctor about why this balance issue affected my job.

It hurt since I literally only lasted one year. Still, it had come at a good time, as my manager had brought up my going to the academy a few times to become a groomer. I had turned it down each time.
I liked being part-time and having less responsibility. I was often exhausted from just doing a bath and brush, so I couldn’t imagine doing a full groom.
I had seen my coworkers do a six-hour groom on a Goldendoodle.
They behaved, but the thought of handling just one of those gave me a headache, much less having more dogs like that.

However, the choice was out of my hands when I started wobbling at work. Things had happened. A beagle had backed out of a loop and rolled off the table on my watch in front of his owner.
The dog was alright, rolling enough to disperse the force, and the owner said he did that kind of stunt all the time.

Did that make me feel any less horrible or guilty? No.
I had a panic attack the next day after my salon lead, and managers spoke to me about it. It had occurred in front of the safety lead of our salon, so it was even worse.
I didn’t lose my job, but it was an incident report. It made me realize that if there was even a possibility of this affecting my work and the dogs in my care, I had to get it fixed.

I held my mom’s hand as I sobbed that I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I told her that I thought I had left my past of rookie mistakes behind me. Small things like forgetting to do eye wash after the bath or taking my hand off a dog for more than a second.
I had gotten better, but POTS, as I found out, can cause brain fog and worse reaction times. This is what I believe is what happened at that moment.

It didn’t matter then, and it still doesn’t now. That dog could have been hurt, and that guilt will forever stay with me for that.
Until my last day in the salon, my name on the board of improvement under the safety category haunted me. It was supposed to change every week, but of course, no one did when I needed it the most.

I’ll get into the specifics of what happened with my doctor and the buttload of tests afterward. But I want something to stick with those reading this now.
If you think you might have POTS, dysautonomia is general, or anything else, please don’t wait.
Especially if you have a job where someone trusts you with someone. You may convince yourself it’s nothing like I did until something strikes you in the throat with how wrong it is. Knowing what POTS is, I’m lucky I’ve never fainted, but just the balance and brain fog put dogs in danger.

I want you to know you are not alone and do not blame yourself if you can’t do your job because of your body.

It is not your fault. You will be able to find something else. Something safer. Acknowledge the possibility of needing to look before you are forced to. Before something happens, that you will regret forever.

Love yourself enough to take care of yourself.