Anonymous #1 13w

I tested negative 😭 They gave me an iv beforehand and like two minutes to calm down before starting the test (I hyperventilate with needles so my heart was not chillin while lying down) then the table slowly raised to almost standing and I stood there for thirty minutes. My head felt like a bowling ball and I felt like my heart was beating fast but they said all the stats looked normal

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Anonymous OP 13w

They didn’t do any of the other tests? An iv is very normal for a tilt table because they need to take blood 2x throughout the test. I had mine in all 2-3 hours I was there. I can’t really speak to how stress impacts tests cause 9/10 times I think it’s fun to do stuff like this (weird ik) but before they tilted the table I did the breathing test, sweat test, etc. and I certainly didn’t get the results in 24 hours. I’d get a second opinion and ask about this stuff before hand

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Anonymous #1 13w

Yeah, they didn’t do any of that lol. The iv was only for fluids in the case that I passed out. Literally all it was was slowly being raised to kind of standing and staying there for 30 minutes

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Anonymous #1 13w

If you don’t mind me asking, what is the sweat/breathing tests, and what was your tilt table like? I’m getting the sense that me experience was a lot different than other people’s

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Anonymous OP 13w

The sweat, breath, blood, and neurological tests are to help figure out if and what kind of pots you have. Because it’s more than just fainting. For example, I have neuropathic POTS so I also sweat less or not at all. Basically they put little suction cups on parts of me (my foot iirc?) and simulated/“extracted”/stimulated(? Idk I’m not a scientist) my sweat glands. Since there was basically nothing it was a symptom that helped them point to nPOTS when I was dx’d with POTS

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Anonymous OP 13w

They drew blood at two points, one when I was relaxed, sitting for a while, and once when I was tilted up. another kind has to do with adrenal hormones so it was probably for that. For the breath test, they put on HR and BP monitors and had me blow into a tube that would resist me and see how everything reacted or if I got lightheaded just from that. Probably for the kind related to blood volume? Not sure what the computer test was for but they said the guy who invented it couldn’t pass lol

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Anonymous OP 13w

The last part was the table, they strapped me in, made an obligatory Frankenstein joke, and tilted me up. There was a footplate so I didn’t fall off! I think it went to like 70°? They said it was an angle specifically to make you dizzy/faint. I talked through the whole thing to the med student that was there and described what I was feeling and she looked FREAKED and they told me to stop. They took my blood while I was up there, I stayed up there for a while, didn’t faint, came down, got dxd!

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Anonymous #1 13w

Ugh I would have loved to talk about Frankenstein with my doctor 😔 literally my favorite book (1818 version specifically)

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Anonymous #1 13w

Anyway I have a Dr appointment next Tuesday and I’m hoping to get to talk with them more because even if it’s not Pots, something is up with my heart despite what the test says. It rests at/below 60 then jumps around 100 when standing (and often stays like that), but the biggest thing is just how fast it gets when I’m simply walking two feet over to get a drink of water or something. And then this is of course accompanied by lightheadedness and sometimes, especially when it’s really hot, vertigo

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Anonymous OP 13w

And it’s not a simple like out of shape thing either because I am a fairly active person (aside from flare up days when I have to stay in bed) and my regular stats all read normal (aside from low blood pressure)

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