life, apparently

I have an extremely annoying medical condition.

I would tell you what it is called except that it doesn’t have a consistent name – I’ve been diagnosed with the same thing by 3 different names. So how do I know I even have a real medical condition then? Well, on occasion I feel like I’m going to “pass out” which means that I get really hot (& take off some or all of my clothes), my ears ring, my heart feels funny (not sure how to describe it), and finally a dark circle slowly expands until I can see nothing. Then what feels like hours later (but in reality it less than a minute), I rejoin the world. When I wake up, I can hear things happening around me before I have the ability to respond or to open my eyes. I have no memory for what happens after the black circle. I usually have a super bizarre dream during those seconds.

Now all of this happened to me for my entire life. In elementary school, Ms. Powell (who was Mrs. Huth when my sister was in her class) was the teacher who always found me when I was having an episode. She was very sweet. My pediatrician didn’t really believe there was a problem. He tested me for diabetes and said I was borderline hypoglycemic and when I felt like this I should drink some orange juice and peanut butter to increase my blood sugar. That never solved a thing but now I always want a glass of OJ and some PJ crackers (or a candy bar with nuts) after an episode.

So when I was about 22 and went to get my wisdom teeth removed, I told the Dr. about this, he suggested I see a neurologist, and called and arranged an appointment. I went through another round of tests, in what was one of the worst days of my life. The tests were analyzed immediately and arranged in order of likelihood. At the beginning of the day I had several heart tests, all fine. I’m not epileptic. I do not have thyroid, kidney, or other metabolic problems. And on and on.

The final test of the day was a tilt table test. Sounds very simple. You lay on a table and they slowly tilt it. They put in an IV stint just in case but nothing more. Bingo. After the first minor tilt, I start to feel funny and I pass out. Now when I came to, I hear “Code Blue! Code blue!” and I hear my mom rush through the waiting room doors and yell my name. Once I can open my eyes, there is a person holding defibrillation paddles over my chest. He (she? I have a vague feeling it was a she now that I read this again) hadn’t used them but was inches away from doing so.

As it turns out “passing out” in my case means that my heart stops, I stop breathing, and things that go along with that (my limbs get rigid and my skin turns a bluish-gray). Apparently, I’ve obviously get to skip this part. 36 seconds later I return to normal.