Just Like a Pint After a Long Day

You know that feeling you get after a long, stressful day when you sit out on a patio somewhere and take that first sip of an ice, cold beer... you feel your shoulders relax, and the tension just melts away.  Well I was reminded today how a little bit of beta blocker can have that same effect on me.

Maple beer from 3 Brewers in Toronto during my pre-POTS days.

The trial of only using my beta blocker as needed didn't last long.  Saturday afternoon I tried just 5 mg of propranolol when the palpitations became bothersome, and my resting HR was 102. The result?  Well my HR went down, but my blood pressure dropped too much.  I got a killer migraine and was experiencing pre-syncope while lying down.  I felt miserable.

After Saturday's debacle, I felt pretty rundown on Sunday and tried once again to avoid using a beta blocker.  That ended today at 5:30pm, when I was tired of the tachycardia and had an HR of 145 just from standing up.  I went back to my tried and true atenolol, but only took a quarter of a pill to try to walk the line between my HR and BP.  About an hour later, I felt like I had just taken that first sip of frosty beer.  The tachycardia was gone, and I could stand without feeling like I was about to launch into space.  It was sublime.

Moral of the story: My beta blocker and I need each other... almost to the point of wanting to doodle my beta blocker's name on the cover of my notebook.  Amy + atenolol = 4 Eva