The Blog Awards Ireland 2016 – Nominations Now Open

Posted on May 30, 2016 by Fainting Goat

Hi all,

I am delighted to say that Irish Dysautonomia Awareness has been entered into this years “Health & Well Being” – Personal Blog – Category in the blog awards nominations and hopefully will make the long list at least, that’s where it got last year so to make that again would be really nice! 🙂

If YOU would (Please) like to Nominate this blog Please click HERE (Give it a minute to load, it can be slow!) or click the image below and follow the instructions. I would greatly appreciate your input, THANK YOU! You need to register with the site but you can do so quickly and easily by signing in with your Facebook and you can control what information you give them.

Please enter The Title of the blog: Irish Dysautonomia Awareness,
Also pop in the URL of this Blog which is: https://irishdysautonomia.wordpress.com
also please be sure to enter it into the ‘Health & Well Being’ – Personal Blog – Category.
Thank you ever so much!

Please click here and enter the info to Nominate this blog! – THANK YOU!

This year there is also an entry to nominate your favorite Blog Post from the blog here. In the last number of months the post that has raised most interest seems to be this one:
‘The Good, The Bad & The Emergency – Part 1’

I would also greatly appreciate if you have the time, to maybe nominate that blog post Please and thank you most kindly! as far as I can figure, there’s no harm in trying! 🙂

It is the same process as the first, please click Here:
Hit ‘Nominate a Blog’ – Enter the ‘Blog Post’ Title as: The Good, The Bad & The Emergency – Part 1

The Blog Post link is : https://irishdysautonomia.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/the-good-the-bad-and-the-emergency-part-1/

The Category is ‘Best Blog Post’ – Personal Blog

Please Click Here and Enter ‘Blog Post’ Details (As I have laid out above) for Nomination – Thank You

Thank you so very much for you time in doing this each and every year, I may be back to you for more support if we make it to the ‘public vote’ part but even if it doesn’t get anywhere, a few more people will view the blog as a result of just entering and further our much needed awareness, even just a teeny bit.

Thank you once again,

Lette – Fainting Goat!

Great News! An Interview With Dr. Mustafa Ahmed, I Need Your Questions!

Posted on March 15, 2015 by Fainting Goat

If you remember a few posts ago, I had mentioned I was looking for people to contribute to the blog by submitting some articles or anything they would like to share. That offer still stands to all of you but I am delighted to announce that on Friday, I was approached and offered an interview with Dr. Mustafa Ahmed, the interventional cardiologist who created The POTS Center.

Mustafa Ahmed MD, is a Cardiologist and Scientist, internationally recognized in areas including valvular and surgical heart disease and POTS. He was born in Nottingham, England, he went to medical school at the Victoria University of Manchester. After graduation he took postgraduate positions at the prestigious Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester, then the Queens Medical center, Nottingham. Dr Ahmed then moved to UAB where he was the first ever person selected for the highly competitive Physician Scientist Training Program with specialization in cardiology and interventional cardiology. – myheart.net

We discussed the possibilities of how best to approach this and I thought, why not open the questions up to all of you lot, the community reading this? Then everyone can contribute and have their questions answered by Dr. Ahmed.

If you have a POTS related question that you would like answered please get it to me before Monday the 23rd of March. Feel free to either email me on irishpotsies@gmail.com or leave a comment here or on the other social networks. Facebook, the private Facebook Support Group & Twitter

I am really looking forward to passing all our questions to Dr Ahmed and I thank him for this opportunity to raise more awareness 🙂

Get your questions into me, cant wait to see what you come up with!

Lette 🙂

Featured in The Cork Independent This Week

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Fainting Goat

You may find the full article here, but I will copy pasta the article for you to read anyhow.
A massive thank you to Yvonne Evans for doing the interview with both Deirdre O’Grady and myself. Much appreciated 🙂

Pots and pain

May is Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS) awareness month. Most people who have heard of the condition, and there are a few, see EDS as a condition whereby the skin is stretchy and joints tend to dislocate easily. However, there is more to EDS then these symptoms. Many patients with EDS suffer from Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). This condition is one of the most difficult sub-conditions to manage and with no specialists in Ireland, many people go undiagnosed. Although POTS is associated with EDS, many people suffer from the condition separately. Yvonne Evans spoke to two women this week about POTS, the effects and how difficult it is to get adequate treatment in Ireland.

POTS is a form of dysautonomia. The autonomic system is responsible for a host of bodily functions that we do not have to think about, such as sweating, breathing, digestive function, blood pressure and heart rate. The current diagnostic criteria for POTS is a heart rate increase of 30 beats per minute or more, or over 120 bpm, within the first 10 minutes of standing. POTS is often diagnosed using a tilt table test (TTT). Symptoms of the condition include dizziness, fatigue, fainting , difficulty exercising and palpitations, to name but a few.31 year old Lette Moloney was diagnosed with POTS in 2011 after 14 years of recurring symptoms including syncope (fainting). After collapsing at home and not regaining consciousness, she was admitted to hospital for one month. A TTT confirmed that Lette had the syndrome and was advised to increase her salt intake and exercise more.

Lette currently takes 18 pills a day and even still, she continues to faint. At the time of this interview, she is on day 10 of her latest hospital visit after suffering seizures which are also associated with POTS. She has yet to receive any tests to find out why she has started having seizures.

“I have a good team of medical professionals now, but I had to find them myself. There are no specialists in Ireland that I can find,” she said.

“The cocktails of drugs had been working. Last year I saw a big improvement in my health and I was feeling well enough to look for work. I then landed a job and it was perfect. I could work from home. But then my POTS started acting up again. I would have to put people on hold and be sick,” says Lette.

Last summer after an 11 day hospital visit, Lette’s consultant recommended that the 31 year old should stop working altogether.

Deirdre O’Grady from Macroom is the mother of two children, Kerri (14) and Aaron (8). Both of her children suffer greatly from POTS and are often hospitalised much to their mother’s frustration.

“I have been often told by doctors that fainting and low blood pressure are normal for children.Two years ago Aaron was diagnosed with EDS and POTS by Professor Grahame in London. I knew when he started walking that there was something wrong but no one listened. We have to travel to the UK to access treatment, the next trip will cost us around €2,000,” says the mother of two.

14 year old Kerri who is sitting her Junior Cert exams this year, often passes out and has been seen by four different hospitals here in Ireland.

“On a trip to Canada, Kerri began complaining about headaches and feeling nauseous. That never went away and after Aaron being diagnosed, I knew in my heart it was EDS and POTS too. She passes out very often, one day she didn’t regain consciousness so she was brought to hospital via ambulance,” explains Deirdre.

Both Lette and Deirdre have expressed their disappointment with the Irish health system. The treatment abroad scheme is available here in Ireland if patients can not access treatment in Ireland. However very few patients are granted the scheme and often spend thousands on each each visit to the UK. Lette has started an online Facebook support group for those who suffer from POTS and other forms of dysautonomia.

Lette is now confined to a wheelchair and Deirdre’s son often needs a wheelchair too.

“It is an invisible illness but it is there, there needs to be a better understanding of both conditions here in Ireland. Kerri’s school have been very accommodating to her condition but I still have to fight for Aaron in school,” says Deirdre.

For more information about POTS, see ‘Irish Dysautonomia Awareness’ on Facebook. Lette also writes a blog about life with POTS and EDS. See irishdysautonomia.wordpress.com.

WiredFM Interview

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Fainting Goat

This turned out to be quite the giggle, There is a blooper at the start, I ramble all the way through and its like someone put batteries up my bum and set me on repeat! :p But I tried! LOL!

The sound is a little all over the place and I could only upload the video in standard resolution as the HD file was huge, so ill try and get that up at a later stage.

Thanks muchly to my Hubby Keith for throwing the video together and don’t worry, there isnt someone being tortured outside the studio, there is a guy playing Table Tennis and he wasnt having a good game!! :p

I hope you enjoy!

Lets Try This Again Shall We?!

Posted on November 30, 2011 by Fainting Goat

Due to unforeseen circumstances this Sunday night/Monday morning at about 01:30am, I started vomiting pretty hard and brought up quite an amount of blood with a horrendous lot of pain, Obviously The hubby and I were very worried and decided to ring the ambulance where I recieved lots of Morphine (*Overly happy girly voice: Which was awesome!!) and got treated in hospital, luckily it was nothing too serious just the getting sick and acid from my stomach had damaged my esophagus pretty bad that I started to bleed. So once I was given treatment and some IV fluids I was allowed to return home thankfully, I couldnt handle another stay in hospital!

Im am doing better now, just a bit sore in my throat and chest as the full length of my esophagus is pretty raw and I have to eat all soft foods which means I’m not getting full calories and making me even more tired than usual, but im good, remember (This one’s for MissNikkiAnn) NO DOOM & GLOOM!! :p

Either way, I had to cancel the radio interview for Monday morning or they would have had to call another 2 ambulance’s to the radio station, one for me again and one for the poor DJ who would have had a small heart attack because of me!! :p

Thankfully, Lou and Wired FM were very understanding and they have rescheduled the show to this coming Monday the 5th December. So here are the updated details for the show as long as my Dysautonomia (I should probably give it a name at this stage) decides to behave itself and doesnt kick my ass again next week!!

Listen in to WiredFM , where I will be speaking to the lovely Lou M. Dennehy, spreading the word about Irish Dysautonomia Awareness. Its next Monday the 5th of December, live on air from 12 to 12:30pm Irish time. It streams live ‘Here‘ and will also be available for download and listening to from Soundcloud after the show. Ill add all relevant links here anyhow.

Thanks Lou for asking me to come on the show, I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak about the cause and hope to do us potsies proud! 🙂

I am going to record the show as it happnens so I will upload the video here after it happens, hopefully everything will turn out good!

Chat soon and remember if anyone would like to get involved in the blog or the Youtube channel, just drop me a line at: irishpotsies@gmail.com, All welcome, its not just for the Irish 😉

Gonna Be On The Radio!

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Fainting Goat

WiredFM to be exact, where I will be speaking to the lovely Lou M. Dennehy, spreading the word about Irish Dysautonomia Awareness. Its next Monday the 28th of November live on air from 12 to 12:30pm Irish time. It streams live ‘Here‘ and will also be available for download and listening to from Soundcloud after the show. Ill add all relevant links here anyhow.