Navigating Tangled Healthcare System with Addiction History

AUDIO – LIFE IS NOT FAIR –

April 25, 2024 – “I feel like I’ve spent my life wanting, like wanting to be able to tell the story.”

Melanie Caturia is a mom of two in her late 40’s who lives in Minocqua.

She recalls being a sickly child, but the real trouble didn’t start until she was a teenager. At 19, she started experiencing heat intolerance, a common symptom of Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome or POTS.

“I loved sun, so that was very weird for me. I loved heat,” she explained.

She wouldn’t be diagnosed with POTS until years later when she was finally able to get a tilt table test in 2023.

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome:

For most people, your temperature is regulated by your nervous system; when you get too hot, you sweat and that cools you off, for example.

In people with POTS, their temperature is not regulated properly, because there’s dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, the system that manages involuntary bodily processes like breathing, digestion, temperature regulation and more.

“I couldn’t walk, I was very out of breath. It feels like I have ran a marathon. It feels like I’m.. in deep exhaustion, so I couldn’t walk from my car to the school,” she said.

POTS is characterized by a dramatic increase in heart rate upon standing, leading to dizziness and sometimes even fainting.

“There are days where I cannot stand up. I’m very lightheaded, very dizzy,” said Caturia.

Since POTS impacts the whole nervous system, symptoms are far-ranging from nausea to headaches to blurry vision to constipation to extreme fatigue.