This is a long one. You’ve been warned.

The 2005 – 2006 school year was quite possibly the worst of my lifetime. It was my first year teaching, and I was miserable. To make an extremely long story short: my teammates were awful, the principal was awful, and my internship mentors were awful. In conclusion, the whole year was just plain terrible for me. So much in fact that I ended up on depression medication.

Sometime during the year I had my first fainting spell. It happened when I woke up to get ready to go to work. I was in the bathroom ready to begin my morning routine and I felt sort of dizzy, hot, and nauseous. I went to the bedroom to lie down on the bed for a minute. The next thing I know, my husband (who was my boyfriend at the time) was pretty much smacking me on the face saying, “Look at me, Look at me!” On the way to the bed, I had passed out, fell against the dresser and landed on the floor. I kept telling him I was so tired and for him to just let me go back to sleep. I had no energy. Needless to say, I didn’t go into work that day. I hadn’t been sleeping well and was very stressed out, so I assumed the passing out was due to those two factors. I did see a doctor and was given a sleep aid and an anti-depressant. I didn’t pass out any more during that school year, so I thought it really had been stress related.

Ever since that school year I have been passing out at least twice a year. I once told a doctor about this and they had told me that it was probably just due to some sort of “level” being low in the morning. The doctor made me feel like it wasn’t that big of a deal so I wasn’t too concerned about it. I had told my teammates at work about this and one of them had a similar passing out issue when they were around my age and eventually it just stopped. Some of my passing out episodes have been pretty dangerous. Once, I passed out in the shower. I knew it was going to happen so I sat down in the shower but I made the mistake of facing toward the water. I came to choking on water. Another time I felt like I needed to use the bathroom so I sat on the toilet and actually passed off and fell off the toilet. My husband heard a loud thud and found me on the floor. When I got up to get ready to go to work after Labor Day this school year I passed out. My mom and husband both basically convinced me I should ask a doctor about this. I went to see my regular doctor and she said she’d like me to have some tests done and that’s where it all started.

I had a CT scan. I had an MRI. I had blood work done. All of these things came back normal so my doctor referred me to a neurologist. When I met the neurologist for the first time, he asked me all of these questions (who is the president, what’s the date, etc.). He asked me to start with 100 and subtract 7 until he told me to stop. I so failed at that. I was nervous, and I am not good at mental math anyway! I probably looked like a fool since I am a teacher and should probably know how to do mental math better than I did. I told him everything I knew about my passing out episodes:

• It always happens in the morning shortly after waking up
• I can tell when it’s going to happen
• I get dizzy, feel hot ,and get nauseous
• I feel like I’m going to have diarrhea
• Sometimes it starts when I am in the shower already
• It happens often when I have to return to work after a long break (like a holiday or vacation)

The doctor ordered some tests: a tilt table test and an EEG. I had the EEG done first. I had this done at the hospital. Basically, they put me in a dark room and hooked me up to some wires and monitored my heart and brain. They were trying to test and see if I was having any seizure like symptoms. The results came back normal. I had the tilt table test done next. Basically they strap you to a table and then incline the table so you’re almost in a standing position. This is supposed to see if you have issues with blood pressure dropping when you go from a sitting position to a standing position. To do the test, they have to put in an IV. The lady who was trying to put my IV in didn’t really know what she was doing and she tried to get the thing in my arm for about 15 minutes. My arm got so sore just holding it out for her that I got hot, dizzy and almost passed out. They had to call in someone else and she got the IV in right away. Once the actual test began I was fine. It was boring. The test came back normal, I didn’t actually pass out or have any dramatic changes in blood pressure during the test. I went back to the neurologist and he went over all of the test results. He said that basically I’m healthy and fine but I pass out sometimes. (Duh!) He even told me that maybe I was just born this way. I asked him about POTS (another condition that I read about online and have many symptoms of). He said the tilt table test would have shown that it could be POTS if I had passed out, but I didn’t. I asked him about my circulation. I had once been told I had poor circulation in my hands. (My hands get absolutely freezing sometimes.) He told me that I could spend thousands of dollars on tests but the bottom line is that my hands would still be cold and that he was trying to save me money and again he said that I might just be born this way. Now, I’m sure his statements come across as sort of quack-ish or rude or ignorant maybe. He’s a foreigner and a really nice man. He’s pretty funny actually. He told me I probably have some sort of syncope but he decided to send me to a cardiologist to have my heart checked out.

When I went to see the cardiologist he started off by telling me I was a healthy young woman and should not be having heart problems. I had to explain what has been going on for the millionth time. He started smiling as I was describing my passing out episiodes and said, “I know what you have.” I asked him what it was and he told me to keep talking and he’d tell me in a minute. Basically, he agreed with the neurologist and told me I have Neurocardiogenic Syncope – a really fancy way of saying I pass out sometimes. I have a sudden drop in arterial blood pressure. I guess there are medications you can take for this, but the doctor said it’s not necessary to be on medication unless it got really severe. When I feel an episode coming on he told me I can cross my legs, make a fist and push against the palm of the other hand, or just lay down. He said if I lay down and then stand back up, the symptoms will go away and I will not pass out. He also told me to drink 6-8 bottles of water a day religiously. Doing exercises to strengthen my leg muscles will also help with blood flow and pressure. He told me that he wanted me to have a heart ultrasound done since I hadn’t had one yet but he expected everything to come back looking beautiful.

I left the doctor feeling pretty satisfied. I actually had a diagnosis. It was nice to put a name with what has been doing on for so long. I went back the next week to have my heart ultrasound done. The woman who did the ultrasound said the doctor would call me with the results. She said she got some “beautiful pictures.” That sounded good to me.

The next week I was in the gym for my afternoon bus duty. I had my cell phone with me because I was going to have the “late” bus which doesn’t get to school until 3:30 so I knew I’d need something to do while the kids were on the computers in the lab. My cell phone rang. Now normally, I don’t answer my cell phone at work but I recognized the number as the number for the doctor’s office. I stepped out in the hallway and answered the phone. The nurse told me that my blood flow looked good but that I had a deformity in my aorta. Something about my aortic valve only having two cusps instead of three. She asked if I was having any chest pain and I told her no. She said that since I wasn’t having any serious symptoms that I wouldn’t need to come back in until my appointment in June. I got off the phone feeling a little…weird? I had just been told my heart had a deformity of some sort. That’s not something you hear every day.

During bus duty I spent that time looking into this deformity I have. It’s called Bicuspid Aortic Valve (BAV). BAV is the most common congenital heart condition. (So… looks like the neurologist was right – I really WAS just born this way!) 1-2% of the population has it, but it is more common in males than females. It’s hereditary. Basically, your aortic valve should have three little leaflets on it to regulate blood flow from the heart to the aorta. Mine has two instead of three, so it was to work harder to pump the blood. SO… my heart has to work harder to regulate blood pressure which contributes to my passing out issue. This also causes me to tire more easily than someone without it. I guess people with BAV start to experience issues in their 40’s. I may have to have a valve replacement surgery sometime in my life or not. Some people have BAV and never even know they have it. Life expectancy of someone with BAV is comparable to someone without it.

I didn’t write this post to get sympathy or hear people say, “Oh, Ashley. I’m so sorry” or anything like that. I wrote it because there might be someone out there having the same issues I have/had and maybe they might run across this post and find some answers. I spent hours looking up my symptoms and never found anything about BAV. I had never even heard of it before. Have you heard of BAV?

If you’ve made it this far and actually read all of this, I appreciate it very much. (*makes a note to update her blockquote*)

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