Went for testing yesterday to confirm possible diagnosis of orthostatic hypotension and came away with a confirmed diagnosis of that and orthostatic tachycardia. How it was explained and what I can remember (unfortunately my husband wasn’t in the room), where my clip was placed is next to the hypothalamus, and the little nuclei on it was most likely damaged during surgery.
The hypothalamus is the link to the nervous system and the autonomic system which automatically regular stuff like sweating, breathing, heart rate etc. Hypothalamus also controls things like sleep, thirst, fatigue, body temperature, circadian rhythms.
So symptoms are a drop of blood pressure on standing of 40 points causing dizziness and lightheadedness, at the same time my heart rate goes up 40 points. The danger is passing out.
Treatment is drink lots of fluids, compression sock that are waist high, increased salt in take, sleep with head elevated 6 to 12 inches, and a medication called fludrocort. The Fludrocort should help increase blood volume and thus reduce the symptoms. It is not something that can be cured, but in most case can be managed.
So it is possible that if we can get this under control I might sleep better and feel less fatigued, wouldn’t that be awesome. The doctor also said there may be a correlation to my migraines.
Only time will tell. So for those of you with unexplained dizziness, etc. could you be suffering the same?