EPISODE 13

Medication Changes in POTS - Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

Hello NormaLyte community its Valorie back with another episode of Project POTS.

It's been a bit of an interesting week for me.

I've been switching up three different medications weaning off two and getting on a new one and I just want to take a moment to talk about my experience with medication changes and all the sort of fun things and side-effects and insurance hassles that come with it.

So the first thing that I do whenever I get a new medication is really to just kind of document the start of any sort of medication changes. I always keep very detailed notes about which medications I start when, which medications I stop and how long it took me to wean. Those sorts of things. I also like to keep track of the side-effects I notice both for the transition to a med and transition off a med just so I have a future reference.

It's also helpful for me to take some orthostatic devices at home. I just have a blood-pressure machine that I got they're really cheap you can find them on Amazon those sorts of things. Doesn't really need to be the best quality but it can hopefully give you some sort of idea, especially for medications, the target heart rate and blood pressure, 'Okay, is this working? Am I noticing a change? Both in feeling and also in number?'

And the last thing I also try to do is to do a little bit of research whether that's online looking at some of the scholarly journals and also talking with my pharmacist before I start a bit to make sure that whatever medication i'm starting is not going to interact with any of the other medications I'm on.

I suffered a pretty serious medication interaction my sophomore year of high school, and it was just one of those things had we checked in the beginning before we started me on one of the two, granted it was a rare reaction, but maybe we wouldn't have done that and it could have saved a lot of pain so just knowing in advance, 'okay is this medication surefire going to do anything with any of my other medications or treatments' or things like that.

And I feel like a lot of times that's not even something doctors are necessarily thinking of or mentioning when they prescribe you medication. A lot of times it's like, 'here's your prescription and take it' and that's it. So it's always really been helpful for me to kind of look at the whole picture, to see is adding this medication going to be more helpful or harmful and of course a lot of times you don't even know until you take it.

So like I said just whatever you can do to kind of document and keep like a very very strong record of what your experience has been can be really helpful both for you currently to know if this medication is working and also for in the future.

A lot of the medications that I am on now have been dictated by the medications that did or didn't work for me in the past.

So I hope some of these tips have been helpful for you.

One of the things I do want to refrain from doing is, what I see happening a lot on Facebook, is a lot of people talking about what meds do and don't work for them and while I'm happy to answer questions if people have them about medications I've tried and such, I think it's really important to recognize that everybody is super different and what worked for some people may not work for another.

So I hope these kind of general tips can help you figure out or help document or kind of guide you through any sort of medication transitions you have.

So I hope everyone's doing well and I look forward to seeing you next week.

Go to Episode 14:  Disclosing Your POTS Condition - Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

 

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