Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Orthostatic Intolerance

After a few good rain storms we're having perfect weather right now - if I could freeze Malta's climate at any one point in the year, this would be it. Today we have blue skies, a few puffy white clouds drifting here and there, 25 C, around 70% humidity (lower would be ok too), and a light east northeast breeze. I'm enjoying the weather from my patio and the couch, but frustrated because I had really hoped that with the cooling weather I'd be able to get out more. As it is, on-going dizziness has kept me tethered. I may have worked out the problem: orthostatic intolerance (OI) is a chronic state for many people with ME. OI is a condition in itself (there's a reasonable discussion of it on Wikipedia), but it's just one more of many symptoms experienced by MEites. One solution to chronic OI is to drink a very large amount of water, more than two liters per day. Now, I'm only 5'2", and I find it quite challenging to drink that much water - not to mention the hassle of keeping track, and all the bathroom breaks, and the vast amount of toilet paper used up in the process! Oh, and the cost of water - here in Malta tap water is undrinkable, and I buy mine in 19L bottles which are delivered, collected, and reused. Nevertheless, now that I'm aware of the problem I'm chugging the stuff down just as fast as I can, and hoping I'll be back on my feet and out taking afternoon walks again soon.

2 comments:

Vinod Subramaniam said...

Hi Nicky, been trying to track you down for some time now. Please drop me a line when you can - I hope to be able to pick up the threads...

vinod Subramaniam

Nicky Reiss said...

Vinod,

Good to hear from you! You're hard to track down too! I'm at: nicolareiss@gmail.com

Nicky