Hi and welcome to the forum! Although I don’t have an easy answer to your question, yours brings up a great point. I would recommend always beginning with your doctors to find answers to you (excellent) questions. Before we go off on our own looking for answers, I think we should ask our doctors these very questions. Likely, they’d be able to offer some insight that could be helpful in figuring out these sorts of things. I agree with you that something seems amiss, but they may be able to clarify their statements, and you never know — it may make sense! 😉
First off thanks for the website and your time!
I’ve attached my doctor’s response where he dodged my questions by simply restating his diagnosis. I also have questions about his assessment of my heart rate being only 33 above baseline. What’s baseline? If it’s meant to be my resting heart rate while lying flat…his value of it is way off.
I’ve recorded my resting heart rate while lying flat many times here. (use the tabs at bottom)
The Propranolol 10mg 1/day may be decreasing it a bit since I began taking it but Friday before starting it I was around 70 on several tests. He claims the difference from baseline was only 33, while 125 was the maximum heart rate. That would mean the baseline would have been 92. 92bpm was never measured anywhere and that’s a ridiculous resting heart rate for someone who’s been active duty in the military for the last 13 years. Additionally, I remember him having written down and showed to me my max heart rate as 131. So 131 – 70 gives us a 61bpm differential. Isn’t that how its supposed to be done? Please help me understand if this isn’t the right method.
A further observation about his notes is he never documented my tremors during the test. I began shaking considerably all over about halfway through the test. I didn’t find this out till after doing some google research, it is a very commonly reported symptom of PoTS.
For many reasons I now ask myself if I should find a different doctor.
I’ve emailed him back with all these questions, sans the different doctor question (lol) and await his response again.
Anyway, thanks again for this great site and forum and I look forward to hearing your opinions!
V/r,
-Clinton Miller
edit: Had trouble getting .txt or .zip to attach, so I’ve added it to my gdrive. Please view it here.