When medications failed to relieve his symptoms, Brandon turned to the POTS Treatment Center and was surprised by the results.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
My name is Brandon. I’m 31 years old and from San Antonio, Texas. I was diagnosed with POTS in November of 2012, but actually my symptoms started in December of 2010. It started with an appendectomy that I got – I had done – and while I was in the hospital, I had caught pneumonia. When I came out, I was never the same.
My main symptoms were I was blacking out, I had really bad headaches, I had constant tremors and just really bad brain fog. I’ve been to every different type of specialist. They diagnosed me with seizures, put me on seizure medication for over a year. I went through all kinds of different seizure studies to find out that I didn’t have them.
So when I was finally diagnosed with POTS, it was kind of a sigh of relief, but I was also told that most of the time, men don’t get it, so that was a struggle. Finally, I was diagnosed and got on some medication that helped a little with the blackouts. The brain fog was still there, still had the headaches. I was told by a doctor that I just needed to accept the fact that my life would never be the same and that I would be tired all the time and I would have those headaches and I would just kind of have to learn to live with it and just manage my symptoms.
I reached a point where I was really down about it. I did not know what to do. I was struggling with the idea of living my entire life in pain and exhausted and not being able to move around, not being able to exercise or anything like that. My POTS specialist doctor actually recommended Dr. K about a year ago, and I heard him but I guess I didn’t take him seriously. I went through and the medication was working a little bit, and there were some other possible diagnoses on the table that may have been causing the POTS so I kind of wanted to see those through. They didn’t come through, so I did a fundraiser through GoFundMe. I was able to raise the money fairly quickly and got here.
When I got here, the first week was rough. I was really exhausted every day, it was very difficult, I was having trouble sleeping. I was kind of depressed about the fact that it didn’t seem like it was working for me like it worked for others. And then the day came when I was getting on my shuttle from my hotel to the treatment center, and the shuttle was late and I was very frustrated. Finally the shuttle came. I got in the shuttle and was headed this way and without noticing, I realized I had been standing up for 30 minutes, something that I could not do before without getting dizzy and getting lightheaded and all of those things. I had been standing up for 30 minutes and I wasn’t dizzy. I also checked my heart rate – my heart rate wasn’t elevated. So, without knowing, I was getting better. In a stressful situation, I remained calm and was able to just kind of breathe through it and be ok. So, that was kind of a turning point and an exciting moment. Even though it was a stressful situation, things were getting better.
I’m on my last day now. Things are a lot better than what they were before. I’ve actually gotten off of one of my medications that was for blood pressure. That medication actually takes my blood pressure down too low – my blood pressure is actually regulating itself. I’m looking forward to getting off of the other ones. Everything that has been said about this place is true. I’m not the type of person that really buys into a lot of holistic type situations, but this was a pleasant surprise. And I’m really glad I did it. I’m getting married in September and looking forward to that and looking forward to being able to get back to work and get back to my life. Thank you, Dr. K, and thank you to everybody here for giving me my life back.