Unanswered questions: My issues with hyponatremia

I will be the first to admit I am a terrible patient, after hours of intense pain on Saturday Matt drug me to the ER. I was pretty sure I'd be leaving my gallbladder behind. The night got long, lots of tests and minimal answers but I was starting to feel better. After 12 hours of this intense pain I could finally stand almost upright and move again. But as we left we had even more unanswered questions. The gallbladder, well only a polyp and maybe some sludge but no stones.

During the workout I first freaked out the doctor with my low heartrate on EKG which was not 40s (had been 88 when we got there) along with some small changes that could indication heart damage, so more labs…luckily the cardiac troponins were negative so we were off. The main question now sat why am I walking around with a sodium of 129 (normal 135-145)? I mean I could understand if I had just done a hard run in hot weather but none of that had been happening.

I continued some tightness in my chest, mild abdominal pain and just tired over the next few days and Tuesday repeat labs showed an even lower sodium, at this point I had done my research and knew some possible causes so we added other labs (all normal). Despite being vegetarian and the first question being enough protein, wrong I was fine. Thyroid fine for once. Ugh! Even when I was hardcore training 70 mpw I never had hyponatremia, nothing has changed I drink the same water, eat slightly better and run less and do more strength training. So what is the deal?!

Time to pull out myfitnesspal again! I start tracking and everything appears fine. Okay, my carbs might be a little higher than I need but I’ve always known that was an issue and am slowly working on it. I bought some sweet potato chips, went out for wonderful GF/Vegan pizza on Wednesday and tried to soak in some salt. So now we wait and watch. I was told no more than 60 oz water, what?! Any runner knows that is not happening. I did throw a little sea salt and lemon in my water to help since I can’t limit to that point.

The good to come out of this: I found a primary doctor (okay PA, we advanced practice people stick together!), left with an inhaler and because of this I can breath and my run last night was much better! It is amazing what lung capacity and easy breathing does for running. I’ll keep updated as we continue to follow and run out of veins to draw blood from but anyone else ever experience this? I hate to throw my whole healthy diet and bring back processed junk by the ton again but I need to fix this!