POTS: Lexie's Journey
By Hannah Karbo
Alley
Lexie Fernau is a sophomore at Burke High School. She has always been involved in various activities such as rodeo, basketball, and track.
Last year something changed in Lexie's life that would change everything. Lexie was diagnosed with POTS, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. After talking to Lexie, I learned that people are born with two separate nervous systems, sympathetic and parasympathetic. POTS is extremely hard to diagnose because it is not that common. Your parasympathetic nervous system helps keeps you calm and sympathetic causes a person to become anxious. Lexie's parasympathetic nervous system does not work, which causes her to be in fighter flight mode. Lexie stated that when she stands up her heart jumps. It goes from 40 beats per minute to 127 beats per minute.
Lexie recently went to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. During her three week stay, Lexie and many other people with POTS, worked on coping with this syndrome.
A normal day for Lexie was to start paperwork at 7:30 in the morning, writing down what foods they ate that night and also the medications they took. Once they were done checking in they would have group where they talked about a certain topic with everybody there. Next Lexie would attend either physical therapy or occupational therapy then go back to group discussion. Once group was over, Lexie would have lunch, and then would attend family group. After family group discussion, she would attend either physical therapy or occupational therapy, depending on which one she did that morning. Lexie would then go back to group therapy. Every evening Lexie and her friends at Mayo attended recreation therapy. After all of this therapy, Lexie and her new friends would go out and bowl, or do some type of activity.
“It was extremely helpful, and I am excited to get back to normal life activities,” stated Lexie Fernau