taniaaust1
Senior Member
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Hi everybody. I'm Kate's other friend, mentioned in the original posts. Sorry it's taken me so long to get around to creating an account, here - I have spent a lot of time reading and have found this forum very helpful.
We're not overly concerned about dehydration. Kate is drinking quite a lot of coconut water - she probably drinks more than I do. I do realise that the body requires food to retain fluids, but I feel the more immediate problem is calorie intake.
I know she has a severe issue with calorie intake but do not let that blind you to just how much dehydration (due to ME patients often having low blood volume) can be a serious issue for us too. You can not know that she will not get dehydrated cause she is drinking more then you do.
I say this as this year, I had to be ambulanced to hospital for a collapse which turned out to be due to dehydration and I'd drunk 4-5 Litres that day! (that's double what a normal person drinks, I had not been vomiting nor did I have diarhea). Cause of my ME, my body doesnt hold onto its fluids well and my meds to help boost my blood volume wasnt doing a good enough job. I was so dehydrated that my kidneys had stopped working well.
Kate cause she's bedridden is quite likely to have or develop POTS which is due to low blood volume, those who have POTS need to drink more then a normal person does. Kate and those who look after her, should always be on the look out for dehydration problems.
Unfortunately there is a lot of serious ME complications which can occur which always have to be watched out for. It is extremely likely that kate already does have low blood volume.