Floors

Today I came across a really cool account on Instagram: ihavethisthingwithfloors. "When feet meet nice floors take a selfeet." Such a fun idea, and really pretty pictures too!

This prompted me to ponder a bit about the rather intimate relationship I've had with floors in recent years. And longer ago too actually, which may or may not be unrelated. Anyhow...

I've been chronically ill for quite some time now, and a part of that which - in hindsight - became more of an issue straight away, was problems with being upright. I remember having great difficulty walking home from the subway station, especially at the end of the day, when I'd been sitting/standing/walking for several hours. Somehow it is not customary for people to lie down much during office hours. During these short walks, I'd become increasingly hazy, would have trouble focussing on anything and felt much like a zombie, counting down the seconds till I could sit. Back then, everyone still assumed I was just 'tired', and it would resolve itself soon.

Several years later I learned the way my autonomous nervous system behaves in response to being upright isn't quite the way it should. The tricky bit with changing position is the effect of gravity on the blood in your body. When lying down, it is easy to spread it to all extremities and your head. However when upright, it has the tendency to pool in your legs, and the various systems of your body must work together to make sure the higher parts of you (generally your head) are adequately supplied as well. So your heart pumps slightly faster, in order to give your bloodvessels time to constrict. Once that's done your heart can return to about its normal speed, and all is well.

I, and quite some others too, don't get that process right. My nervous system feels the need to dramatically increase my heart rate (the criteria require an increase of over 30, 40 for adolescents), and it doesn't really return to normal while I'm upright. Despite all that extra work, I still get faint and dizzy often. A more subtle version is me zoning out, and gettting bad headaches. And don't think these things require standing: sitting for too long does the trick too. What this means in practise is that I have to limit my upright time, and if I want to do things that require sitting and mental clarity, I should lie down before and after, and make sure the activity is short enough or can be broken down with lying down pauses in between.

Some time ago 'Dysautonomia International'_ made a pretty good video about POTS. I may also at some point make a page within this site with information and links about this particular issue.

So, to circle back to the floors were I started: from the moment I learned that some of my symptoms could be somewhat alleviated by lying down, I had an increasingly close relationship with all kinds of floors. The floor of my kitchen, the floor in my bathroom, just the middle of the living room due to feeling so faint I couldn't make it to the sofa in time. And, sort of amusingly, the floor in the hallway of my daughter's swimming lessons. What was nice about that was that after a few times, the other parents got used to me, and me lying down wasn't an issue anymore. A bit strange, yes, but lying on the floor meant I could get us there and back safely.

Eventually I was advised to apply for a wheelchair with the option to elevate my legs, and partially recline. It can't do full horizontal, so my relationship with the floor isn't quite over (also I still walk and stand at home which sometimes leads to having to lie down), but less intensive than it was for a bit.

Floors, and using them in atypical ways, make my life a bit better. So yay :)