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Language:
English
Series:
Part 3 of Rottmnt and 2012 Crossover
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Published:
2022-12-14
Words:
1,226
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
23
Kudos:
318
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3,791

Wish I May Wish I Might

Summary:

I have a funky little disorder called POTS. Have Don struggling with the shit I have to deal with

(A part of a series but can be read as standalone)

Notes:

Some things not explicitly mentioned:

- Don is AFAB, but is nonbinary and uses he/they pronouns
- this is set before Leo realizes she is transfem
- Don has fainted due to blood loss and fear and other such things, but has yet to faint due to the POTS
- POTS is a spectrum, not everybody suffering from it faints. I do not personally faint, and neither does Don, but I do believe the older I get the closer I get to a day where it does happen. I suspect the same for Don
- Splinter just thought Don was tired all the time until Don brought up the strange symptoms himself and they all sat down as a family to help figure it out
- POTS diagnoses can take a long time, even years, and sometimes requires certain equipment and personnel, so the turtles will probably never be 100% certain Don has POTS (Don is like 80% sure though)

Leo, Mikey, Raphael, Donnie, Casey = 2012
Leon, Michael, Raph, Don, Cass, CJ, April = Rise

TW: Talk of fainting (nothing happens but it is mentioned a few times, and there’s one scene that describes the feeling of before passing out, but again no fainting actually happens) Stay safe!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The first time any of them noticed the issue was soon after Leon and Don turned 14. That was when it had started to get bad.

 

They hadn’t really thought anything of it at first, just a few dizzy spells here or there, Don probably just hadn’t gotten enough sleep or food that day. Except it kept happening, even after Don had started trying to take a little better care of himself. Even then, though, it had been more annoying than anything else.

 

It hadn’t gotten scary until Don started almost passing out whenever they tried to move. There had been one time where he was working in his lab as normal, and then next thing he knew his head had almost slammed against the desk beside him— that time had been extra worrying to him and his family.

 

Eventually they started to look into it. They had to do weeks of research, and months more after that, through Don’s computers before they had found something that seemed highly likely— it’s not like they could go to a doctor for this after all.

 

They had stumbled upon a disorder called “Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome”, or “POTS” for short. Apparently, it was a fainting disorder that started affecting a person between the ages of 15-50 years old, most commonly with teenage girls. Lucky Don, then. There also apparently wasn’t any known cure, he’d just have to live with it. There was the possibility it could go away on its own, but that wasn’t a guarantee.

 

So apparently Don’s body didn’t like it much when they tried to move, big deal. They don’t even faint, just get worryingly close sometimes! How bad could it really be?

 

———

 

All Don had wanted to do was get a snack. That’s all he got up to accomplish. Their body hadn’t acted up when they stood earlier, so it should’ve been fine to go about their business!

 

Except, apparently, his body wasn’t all too fond of it when he stood for too long. “Too long” probably being subjective, but whatever. Either way, Don was minding their own business, standing in front of the fridge trying to decide on what to eat, and now their body felt all weak and they were out of breath and man they should. Really sit down, probably.

 

He had just wanted a snack, damnit.

 

———

 

Don is pretty certain that climbing stairs should not leave them as winded as it has. He’s a ninja for crying out loud! This is ridiculous! They already had to skip on training because the exercise had made them feel like they would pass out, but come on, really? Stairs?

 

———

 

Now that Don thought about it, he never realized the “seeing stars” effect in the cartoons he and his siblings watched was something that could happen in real life. Now that they are currently watching the dancing little dots twinkling and floating across their vision, it suddenly makes a lot more sense. The realization does not make the pressure in his head any more pleasant.

 

———

 

Sometimes Don’s heart would beat really fast for seemingly no reason. Sometimes that’s all that would happen, but other times they’d start feeling other symptoms too, like shortness of breath or weak limbs, even though they hadn’t done anything to warrant a reaction like that.

 

It was confusing. It was frustrating. It was worrying.

 

It was mostly frustrating.

 

Like right now, when Don was trying to get work done on his latest contraption, and now he could feel his heart beating and it was getting hard to breathe and he felt kind of dizzy and seriously, not cool, body.

 

It took several minutes of Don laying on the floor before it passed, and several more before they felt okay enough to try and get up and back to work.

 

Fuck’s sake.

 

———

 

Apparently salt intake is really important for individuals suffering from POTS, and a lot of people would even crave it without realizing.

 

Seeing as how Don found out about this while devouring an entire bag of extra salty potato chips, he couldn’t really dispute that claim.

 

Don starts carrying around salt packets and snacks in their battle shell, just in case.

 

———

 

One time Don had been sitting down in the living room of the new lair, and when he tried to stand up to go grab himself a drink, he became dizzy, lightheaded, short of breath, his vision started to black out, the works.

 

Of course, like most times this happened, Don felt an inkling of frustration towards his body, and rather pettily said, “Oh, fuck you,” out loud while plopping back onto the couch.

 

This would have been fine, had the alternate dimension Leo not been in the same room, and subsequently had to have the situation explained to him.

 

———

 

Don did not expect to have an “oh wait that’s cause of POTS” moment. They thought they knew all there was to know about the disorder already.

 

Apparently he was wrong, because somehow he missed the information about cold and heat flushes.

 

If Don could eradicate this disability here and now, they would’ve done it yesterday.

 

———

 

Going out in the field can be dangerous for Don sometimes, and he hates it.

 

It’s already bad enough that they’re a softshell, but having to worry about their POTS acting up and possibly fainting in the middle of a battle? Don has failsafes, of course, but that doesn’t stop him being paranoid about it.

 

———

 

Don has always been susceptible to headaches— migraines, in particular. They are not pleasant. Apparently POTS is a pretty big factor in this. Joy.

 

Don has had migraines that were so painful, so debilitating, that they couldn’t even move. Not like an “oh, moving too much makes my head hurt worse” way, but a “oh, even the thought of moving makes my head feel like it’s being split in half and an overwhelming feeling of nausea to overtake me” way.

 

Fuck, Don hates migraines. Hopefully one of his siblings will wander into the kitchen soon and see him whining and groaning on the floor in pain and rescue him, because he’s not sure how much longer he’ll be able to stand this.

 

———

 

Don had struggled with the idea that this POTS they couldn’t even be properly diagnosed with was a disability for them for a long time. It hadn’t even occurred to him that it could be for almost half that time. But it is. They struggle in their day to day life, every single day, likely coming closer and closer to the day it’ll develop to the point where they will start passing out— in which case, that only makes the point all the more true— and desperately wishing all these symptoms would just go away and leave them alone.

 

But they won’t. They probably never will. They will probably only get worse, and Don will just have to live with it, even if he hates it, even if it makes life difficult, even if it means he can’t always do the things everyone else can do, even if it’s stupid and frustrating and beyond annoying, because it’s a part of himself.

 

Their body is a little shit, and is constantly trying to take them out, but it’s their body nonetheless and Don has learned to live with it, no matter how bad it gets.

Notes:

I have POTS, and have gotten diagnosed. Most of what is written here is based off of my own personal experience, because I seem to have a habit of projecting onto these turtles a lot. Yes it is a disability, even if you don’t fully faint, not all disabilities are visible

(Beta read by my friend harmless_spider)

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