It started as a normal week in the fall of 2020, but little did I know that my sense of normal, as I knew it, was about to disappear from my life. On a Tuesday in October, I woke up feeling off, but since I got COVID in March, I had some off days, so I didn’t give it another thought, and I had to get on Zoom for class.
It wasn’t until I was walking around my house, from my bedroom to the bathroom to the library listening to music, that I noticed something felt weird with my heart. I knew I wasn’t OK. I’d become a pro at ignoring pain and strange things going on with my body, so I got ready for class.
Hours later, as I was doing homework, the pain got worse. It didn’t make sense then, but it felt like something was gnawing at my heart, eating it. My mom immediately called the doctor when I told her, and she pushed me upstairs to use my nebulizer.
After speaking with the doctor, my mom walked into the library and found me sprawled out on the floor, aching in pain. “She isn’t sending you to the hospital because she doesn’t know what we’re dealing with, and they won’t know what to do,” she said. “Keep using the nebulizer, we’ll get an appointment this week.”
That night, my mom took me on a drive, thinking I needed to get out of the house. She was also desperately trying to get food in me, so we stopped at Culver’s. The nebulizer and the pain were making me incredibly nauseous to the point where I couldn’t even look at food.
I didn’t touch the ice cream as we drove home, which worried her. I should be hungry and who doesn’t want ice cream? “Just one bite, that’s all I’m asking,” she begged. I broke down, sobbing. I couldn’t ignore the pain anymore. “Everything hurts so much. It feels like I’m getting shot through the heart,” I croaked through the tears.
I watched my mom’s whole demeanor change. She called my doctor immediately, even though it was 8 p.m., and she wasn’t in the office anymore. “She’s crying her eyes out, it’s too painful to eat, she can’t move,” my mom told the doctor. “I feel like she needs to go to the hospital.”
“I know, but I don’t think they’ll know what to do,” my doctor said. “Have her go to bed and see how she is in the morning.”
When we got home, my mom basically carried me to her room and had to feed me ice cream because I couldn’t move. I kept telling myself, “It’s going to be fine. You’ll feel better when you wake up.” I couldn’t think of dealing with this any longer. I would go insane.
Everything kept getting worse throughout the week. My heart still felt like it was being eaten, the pain was unbearable, and then my face started to look ghoulish, then waxy and corpse-like, almost like I put on Halloween make-up.
After I saw my doctor, I then ended up in the hospital the next day due to my arm going numb, and I started to realize that this might be my new reality. All the doctors I saw weren’t giving us any answers and were making me think I was crazy. When they asked me if the meds and fluids being pumped into my arms were helping, and I said no, they gave me this weird look.
When we got into the car, I broke down. It didn’t make sense that the doctors had no idea what to do. As we left the parking lot, my dad called my mom for an update. “This is so stupid. She can barely breathe, and they didn’t tell us anything,” my mom yelled into the phone. “What the heck are we going to do?”
Eventually, I was diagnosed. What I have is called Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (called POTS) and Long COVID that causes tachycardia, fainting, nausea, migraines, and many other symptoms. I later learned I’m among the very few people who have every single symptom of both illnesses.
During those early, dark days, I needed someone who had the energy, the fight to push for answers or relief when I couldn’t. My mom was that person—and continues to be — who can push past the doctors who didn’t understand what I have. Knowing my mom is there, to help me fight something I’ll likely be fighting all my life, keeps me going.
Morgan Bruner is a journalism major at Columbia College Chicago. To learn about the causes of and treatments for POTS, go here.
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