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The problem with POTS - okay, one of the problems with POTS - is that when you have to explain it to someone who doesn’t know, you usually have to boil it down to “I get dizzy when I stand up.” Buck, having lived with POTS for a couple of years, was no exception to this. Sure, his family and friends knew more about the condition than most people, but they didn’t truly understand, and dizziness was just the tip of the iceberg.
ONE - Brain Fog
Buck hated when he got brain fog. When he first started experiencing it, he thought it was something psychological, like he wasn’t able to concentrate or think for some other reason. To be fair, that was before he got his diagnosis - before he even knew what POTS was.
When he finally learned the term “brain fog,” it fit perfectly. He couldn’t imagine calling it anything else. After all, it really did feel like fog in his brain - a dense cloud halting his train of thought in the middle of nowhere.
It usually hit when he first stood up, or when he went up the stairs too quickly. It hit sometimes when he laughed too hard, increasing his heart rate too fast and preventing his blood from being efficiently pumped up to his brain, but occasionally he felt that familiar, annoying cloud descend on his consciousness when he was doing nothing at all.
He was sitting at the dining room table with Chris one day, helping him with algebra, when suddenly none of the letters and numbers on the page made any sense at all. The fuzziness in his brain was like an itch, and he shook his head, trying to dispel it. Unsurprisingly, the action had no effect.
“Buck,” Chris groaned from next to him. “I’m having trouble with this one.” He pointed at the page, drawing Buck’s limited attention to a problem that looked more like hieroglyphics at that moment.
“I don’t know about that one, bud.” Buck squeaked out, blinking his eyes as if that may help him decipher the question.
“Well we can’t ask Dad, he’s hopeless when it comes to math.”
Buck scoffed in agreement. He wished he could help at that moment, but he couldn’t even think of an alternative solution.
“It’s okay, Buck.” Chris said, almost sagely. “I’ll just text my friends and see if they know.”
Great. Buck thought, these eighth graders are smarter than me.
TWO - Nausea/Loss of Appetite
Buck lived for Bobby’s cooking.
Even if it weren’t for the familial bond he’d made with the other members of the 118 A-shift, Buck would probably have happily stayed just for his captain’s legendary recipes. The gooey cheese melts of his lasagna, the just-spicy-enough chili, his iconic casseroles. Even the thought of Bobby’s cooking made Buck’s mouth water…. usually.
They had just come from an hours-long call. A brutal structure fire that had the whole team sweaty, exhausted, and hungry. Buck was no exception, stomach rumbling as he sat down at the table to eat - that was, until the pot roast was in front of him and suddenly he felt like he could throw up.
His stomach turned with nausea, and he was almost thankful it was empty. He swallowed the feeling down, but as the serving spoon reached his plate, he couldn’t bear to put anything on his plate, knowing he wouldn’t be able to eat it.
“Are you feeling okay, Buck?” Hen questioned, observing his refusal of the food.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m just not hungry.”
“After that fire?” Chim scoffed. “I thought you’d be scarfing dinner down faster than Cap could say ‘order up!’”
“I don’t know what to tell you.” Buck shrugged. “I’m just not hungry.” He glanced towards his boyfriend, and saw his eyes narrowing subtly at him. Of course he would know something was up. “I’m going to go rest in the bunk room. Maybe I’ll be hungry after a nap.”
“Okay, Buck.” Bobby nodded, face cautious. “I’ll save you a portion, we’re offline for a couple hours to recover, anyway.”
Buck picked himself out of his chair, grabbing his half-gallon bottle of water and retreating to the bunk room. He sat for a couple seconds on the side of the cot, swallowing down water like a fish. After a good half of the bottle was gone, he let it settle before laying down.
Being horizontal relieved his nausea almost immediately. It was one of his most annoying symptoms, overtaking him at the worst of times and making it near impossible to do his job on bad days. But it was especially prohibitive when it ruined his appetite.
He needed to eat to keep his stamina up, he needed to get electrolytes like sodium to keep his blood pressure up, and he needed water to stay hydrated. On good days, a nausea spell would eliminate his ability to do the first two things. On bad days, he couldn’t even keep water down. It’d gone on so long on some occasions that he’d ended up with Hen sticking an IV into his arm.
It was only a few minutes after he’d laid down that he heard faint footsteps entering the room and felt a warm presence next to him. Eddie.
“How are you doing, baby?” Eddie ran his fingers through Buck’s tangled curls.
“Mmmmm.” Buck hummed in response, then cleared his throat. “I’ll be okay, just not hungry.”
Eddie paused for a second. “Okay,” he finally whispered. “I hope you feel better.”
He pressed a kiss to Buck’s forehead and quietly left the room. Buck could hear him linger in the doorway for a second without opening his eyes. He drifted off, tired and hungry, and hoped for a better day when he woke.
THREE - Memory Problems
Of the places in LA to visit as a family, the Buckley-Diaz clan’s favorite was definitely the zoo. Buck often opened their excursions by questioning the ethics of the operation, but that habit had stopped ruining the experience years ago.
Eddie always enjoyed walking around with his boys, learning facts while looking at animals. Buck took going to the zoo very seriously. He read every plaque, even though he’d read them all a hundred times before. He insisted on spotting every animal they could, visiting every exhibit, even the ones that Chris didn’t want to go to and the snakes that Eddie was scared of. It was all tradition.
Still, the most important part of any Buckley-Diaz outing was the BuckFacts™. Buck shared countless facts about the animals, their habitats, even the plant life in the exhibits - anything he’d dredged up from the depths of the internet in one of his many late-night research binges.
They were passing the Lions when Eddie pointed it out.
“Did you know, that time a few years ago when the power went out wasn’t the only time there was a major escape from here? In the 90s and oughts, the conditions were pretty bad, and the security measures were abysmal. At least 35 animals escaped over 20 years, which is really a lot without an external cause.”
“Buck, baby.” Eddie stopped him, putting one hand on his shoulder and the other cupping his jaw. “You’ve shared that fact four times now.”
“What? That can’t be right.” Buck bit his lip, searching his memory for what Eddie was telling him. He was sure he didn’t share that fact, at least not this trip - that must be what Eddie meant. “Oh, right, I guess I would’ve shared it last time, and the time be-”
“No, baby.” Eddie interrupted him, a worried look in his eyes. “You told us that five minutes ago, do you really not remember?”
“I must be distracted.” Buck reasoned to his boyfriend. “Sorry about that.”
“As long as you’re ok.” Eddie smiled thinly and resumed walking alongside Buck, holding his hand as they approached the ostrich enclosure.
See, the thing was, Buck knew what had happened, and it wasn’t that he was distracted. Short term memory loss was a lesser-known symptom of POTS, but a symptom all the same. He wasn’t feeling too terrible, or they wouldn’t have gone to the zoo, but he had been walking around for a while, and it wasn’t all that surprising he’d had some memory loss. He was just frustrated that he was clearly forgetting so much.
Buck stayed mostly quiet for the rest of the trip, only speaking when Eddie or Chris asked him a question. Both Diazes were clearly worried about him, but he brushed it off and kept reading the plaque in front of the kangaroos, trying desperately to commit the precious family moments to memory.
He didn’t tell Eddie. If Eddie knew he was forgetting things, it would just make him sad. And Eddie deserved to enjoy the moments like Buck wished he could. At least he had the pictures, even if he couldn’t clearly remember taking a few of them.
FOUR - Vision Issues
When Buck first started experiencing symptoms, one of the most distressing ones (other than the fainting) was the fact that sometimes, he would stand up and his vision would black out. It made physiological sense, after Hen explained it - not enough oxygen was reaching his brain so some functions didn’t work. Like a computer running slowly (and then crashing) but with his brain - fun!
Buck learned later that the changes in vision with POTS symptoms weren’t limited to just losing sight before passing out, it ran a large gamut of problems. Sometimes he had difficulty focusing on objects, other times he couldn’t focus his eyes properly at all, his vision going frustratingly blurry. Often, when he stood, his vision would swim, giving him vertigo.
He was lucky, he guessed, that he didn’t lose vision entirely very often, especially since his meds had eliminated most of his fainting episodes. The blurriness and vertigo were disorienting though, especially when he was in an unfamiliar place. See, he could handle it at the station or at home, where he knew the layout by heart and only needed to dodge the people-shaped blobs in order to get around convincingly, but if he didn’t know where things were placed, all bets were off.
This is how Buck found himself manning the LAFD recruitment booth at UCLA, tripping over everything in his path as he tried to find the restroom.
He’d gotten directions from May, who had stopped by his table and talked his ear off, but as soon as he stood up from his folding chair, he knew he was in for a ride. He’d been to UCLA a couple times, once for a call, and another time for an event like this one, but it had been set up differently, and it had been years, and he’d never navigated this ballroom with the equivalent of wearing those drunk goggles they use to scare kids in high school.
He was proud to say he only stumbled into three tables on his way to the bathroom, before standing in front of the water fountains and squinting to tell the difference between the signs denoting the gendered rooms. Eventually, he was able to focus his eyes just enough to identify the right room, and made it back to the table in one piece, if not with a few new bruises to add to the weekly collection.
When Eddie found the blooming marks on his legs the next morning, he leveled Buck with a look. “Did you faint again and not tell me?”
“No, I swear!” Buck exclaimed. “I just got a little lost at the job fair.”
FIVE - Migraines
Buck knew what was happening as soon as he woke up. Eddie was already out of bed, the faint smell of slightly-burnt toast and the light laughter of Buck’s two favorite people filtering in from the kitchen. Usually, Buck would smile at this, but not today. Today, Buck had a migraine.
He grimaced at the sound, even the usually-pleasant stimulus grating to his ears. The sun shining through the window danced through the curtains and stung his eyes. The burnt smell of the toast threatened to bring up bile from his stomach.
Instinctively, Buck reached for the drawer in his nightstand, pulling out a bottle of pills by feel alone - his migraine meds, meant for stopping the migraines caused by his POTS before they completely incapacitated him, as this one was threatening to. He swallowed the pill with water from his water bottle and laid in bed for however long it took to kick in. It felt like forever and the blink of an eye.
Buck, now with the throbbing in his skull dulled somewhat, trudged to the kitchen, where Eddie and Chris were arguing playfully. Buck winced at the loud noise, despite himself, which Eddie noticed immediately, going quiet and whispering to him.
“Buck, I didn’t mean to wake you up on our day off. Are you okay, baby?”
“Migraine.” Buck grunted. “I took my meds already.”
Eddie hummed and grabbed a plate, tossing various breakfast items that he’d made onto it and handing it to his boyfriend. “Get something in your stomach before you throw that pill back up.”
“Fine.” Buck mumbled, collapsing into his chair and ripping off a bland bite of toast.
“Good morning, Buck.” Chris said in a quiet voice, familiar with Buck’s migraines. “Do you need anything?”
“No, bud, I’ll be alright, thanks for asking.”
They sat and ate quietly for the next half-hour or so. Chris played something on his phone while Eddie intently watched Buck, who was half-asleep and delirious with pain as he slowly ate the food set before him.
Then, the doorbell rang.
Eddie stood up, quickly, but careful not to scrape his chair on the floor. “Who could that be?”
Both men’s eyes flitted to the calendar on the fridge. There, under the date, was written ‘babysit Jee!!!’ - they had obviously both forgotten.
Sure enough, Buck could see as Eddie opened the door that his sister was the one who had rang the doorbell, Jee smiling broadly in front of her. “Hi! How’s everyone doing?” Her voice rang throughout the house and rattled Buck’s head.
Eddie grimaced as he led Jee and Maddie into the dining room. “Buck’s got a migraine, do you think you can be extra quiet today, princess Jee?”
“Oh!” Maddie exclaimed before quieting her voice. “I didn’t realise - if you need me to find someone else-”
“It’s fine, Maddie.” Buck interrupted half-heartedly from where he sat, his voice weak like the rest of him. “I took my meds, Jee is well-behaved, and if I need to, I’ll put my earplugs in and take a nap.”
“Okay then, I just don’t want her to make it worse.”
“It’s okay, really.” Eddie comforted her, sharing the same slightly-worried but resigned expression. “We’ve got this, you and Chim go enjoy that - art class, was it?”
“Yeah, art class.” She confirmed. “If you’re sure.”
As promised, Jee was on her best behavior, and won the quiet game after 3 whole hours Buck was able to use to sleep off most of the pain, his migraine reduced to a dull soreness behind his eye for the rest of the day.
PLUS ONE - Temperature Dysregulation
It was freezing in this restaurant.
Buck and Eddie were on date night, and they had gotten reservations at this nice place - the chef had like five michelin stars, which Eddie thought sounded pretentious. Buck confirmed that this mostly meant the guy was rich and owned a lot of restaurants, but also that he was a genuinely good chef.
Buck was enjoying his meal - truly he was. He savored each dish and absorbed the convoluted explanations of the ingredient list by the server with every course, but he was just starting his entree when he decided that the chill in the room was not meant for ambience.
The decision mostly came from the fact that Buck found himself shivering, while Eddie, who’d barely even encountered snow, was perfectly fine.
“You’re not cold?” Buck had chittered, hands rubbing the sleeves of his dress shirt in an attempt to get warmer.
“No, I’m not. Are you okay?”
Buck missed the days when he could regulate his own temperature, but part of dysautonomia was that his internal HVAC system was broken. He guessed, if he was being picky, or maybe optimistic, that it was better to feel extremely cold in this very fancy restaurant that they were paying far too much for, because that meant he wasn’t sweating through his shirt.
“It’s your POTS, right?” Eddie continued when Buck didn’t offer a verbal answer.
“Yeah, this is a nightmare.”
“I don’t think so.” Eddie smiled, a glint in his eye.
“Well, you’re not the one shivering indoors!”
But before Buck could finish his stuttered sentence, his teeth clattering, Eddie had risen from his seat, plucked his own blazer from the back of his chair, where Buck vaguely remembered he had asked the hostess if he could keep it ‘just in case,’ and started coming around the table to meet Buck.
Buck stared up at his boyfriend in wonder as the warm material of the jacket fell around his shoulders, immediately comforting him. He stopped shivering, and smiled as Eddie sat back down, relishing the warmth and the smell of Eddie’s cologne.
“Better?” Eddie asked.
“Perfect.”