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I am missing being in math class. My notebooks never looked more pretty.

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I maybe went on a Twitter rant today.

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I’m very proud of Afro Carrot Angel Horse and Ripped Zombie Unicorn Hair Horse. Made during Lynda Barry’s Making Comics class. Grass Fed and Proud.

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A surrealized version of my very real first time in the ER. Besides an exercise stress test I was paid to do as part of a research study (a test that turned quickly into a walking stress test because of tachycardia), I have not done anything that even mildly resembles “athletic” for at least two years.

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POTS is not rare, it’s rarely diagnosed. Part of that is because many doctors dismiss symptoms of POTS (racing heart, chest pain, nausea, weakness, passing out, trembling,) as symptoms of stress or anxiety. As someone with both anxiety and POTS, who has been living with both for seven years, it’s offensive to be told I am unable to distinguish the difference between the two. I know what anxiety feels like. I know what POTS feels like. I know what they feel like together. But I also know the years I have fainted, seized, struggled against this body to walk and breathe and eat are not “just anxiety.” This isn’t to discredit anxiety. It’s to discredit the idea that anxiety is at the root of every kind of physical pain.

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After seven years of stomach pain, fatigue, dying once and feeling like I was dying several times, and two years of seizures and passing out, I was recently diagnosed with POTS (http://www.dysautonomiainternational.org/). This is me, with my hair loss headband and hair before I cut it off and replace it with a hair-loss hat or wig, because winter must be cold for bald heads. POTS, for me at least, has meant my hair is falling out.