Beth Joyce, a 22-year-old British woman is afflicted with a rare condition that makes her faint six times a day.
Beth’s condition is a medical rarity known as ‘Postural Tachycardia Syndrome, which is an abnormal reaction to being upright.
The symptoms first appeared when she returned from a year out in Corfu, a Greek island, where she contracted pneumonia which triggered the viral onset of PoTS.
Joyce said: “I had never fainted before and suddenly I was fainting five or six times a day. It was terrifying. I learnt to recognize the symptoms and once on a night out I was on my way to the toilets to sit down when I fainted.”
“My friends had to explain to the staff that I wasn’t just drunk and they needed to call an ambulance. I woke up in the hospital covered in wires. To be in one place and then to wake up somewhere completely different was a nightmare.”
Four years after her initial diagnosis, she now faints just once or twice in 2-weeks and more remarkably,
Joyce managed to finish her degree in graphic design in spite of the challenge of her condition.
