Service dog helps mom manage dysautonomia

RUSSELLVILLE — For years, Anna Mosley didn’t understand the complications she experienced. She fainted in middle school, often felt light-headed and fought exhaustion she couldn’t explain.

Doctors told her it might be anxiety or heat exhaustion. The answers didn’t fit, but the symptoms kept coming. It took until adulthood for her to learn the truth.

She has dysautonomia, a disorder that affects the body’s autonomic nervous system — the system that controls functions most people never think about, including heart rate, blood pressure, digestion and temperature regulation.

Her specific diagnosis is postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, commonly called POTS, which disrupts blood circulation when standing.

According to Dysautonomia International, POTS causes the heart rate to rise 30 beats per minute or more within minutes of standing, often leading to dizziness, fatigue and fainting.

The condition affects more than 70 million people worldwide and is more common in women between the ages of 15 and 50.

“When a healthy person stands up, their blood moves easily back to their brain in less than a second,” Mosley said. “For someone with POTS, it can take 10 to 15 seconds. That’s 10 to 15 seconds without enough oxygen.”

The delay can leave her disoriented or cause her to black out.

“Sometimes I get a warning — my ears ring or my vision buzzes — but not always,” she said. “It’s exhausting because your body is constantly fighting itself.”

She wears medicalgrade compression leggings to help with circulation and braces for torn labrums in her hips caused by Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, another part of her “dysautonomia trifecta,” as she calls it.

Her conditions include Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, mast cell activation syndrome and POTS.

Each brings its own challenges, and together they make daily life unpredictable.

“I fought for disability for about two years,” she said. “It was very hard to give up my job. I’d worked in health care at Helen Keller Hospital in radiology and loved it.”

Even routine tasks can take hours.

Anna Mosely and her service dog, Sammy, shop for groceries.

“Getting dressed, drying my hair, cooking — everything takes so much energy,” Mosley said. “If we’re going out to eat at six, I usually start getting ready at noon.”

Her mornings follow a strict routine.

“I take my medicine, lie still for a while, then sit on the edge of the bed to wake my feet up,” she said. “If I stand too fast, I can pass out.”

According to Dysautonomia International, people with POTS often use three times as much energy to stand as a healthy person.

The organization’s website explains fatigue is the most common symptom, followed by dizziness and brain fog.

Mosley has found some relief through saline infusions, which she receives five days a week through a port in her chest.

“That helps my blood flow so I can move better,” she said.

She also has help of another kind — a furry, four-legged partner named Sammy, her trained Bernedoodle service dog.

“When I pass out or drop something, he knows what to do,” Mosley said. “He can bring me my water or medicine. If my husband or daughter are home, he’ll go get them.”

Sammy, she said, gives her a measure of independence she lost years ago.

“We don’t get to go out much, but now it’s safer when we do,” she said.

Her mother, Julia Sullivan, said the dog is an answered prayer — one first voiced by Mosley’s daughter, Zalinah, now 10.

“She used to write at school that her wish was for a service dog for her mommy,” Sullivan said. “She wanted Anna to be safe when we couldn’t be there.”

Sullivan said she watched her daughter struggle for years before the diagnosis finally came.

“We went through so many doctors,” she said. “They’d say scoliosis, dehydration, anxiety. Nobody knew. As a mother, you want to fix it all — and you can’t.”

She described the sense of helplessness that comes with an invisible illness.

“People look at her and think nothing’s wrong,” Sullivan said. “They don’t see what happens later — the collapse, the exhaustion.”

Mosley said the misunderstanding is part of what drives her to raise awareness.

“It’s hard when people judge,” she said. “You might see someone park in a handicapped spot and think they’re fine, but you don’t know what’s going on in their body.”

She first spoke publicly about her condition a couple of years ago — after years of keeping it private.

“I just put on a game face and went,” she said. “When I finally opened up, people started reaching out — asking what my symptoms were, what medicines I’d tried. I realized how many others were struggling with the same thing.”

Her biggest message is awareness and advocacy — not just for patients but for doctors and communities.

“It usually takes years to get diagnosed because so few people know what it is,” she said. “That’s what needs to change.”

According to Dysautonomia International, it can take an average of four years for a patient to receive a POTS diagnosis and one in four are so disabled they cannot work or attend school.

For Mosley, progress means spreading understanding and showing compassion even on the days when her own strength runs thin.

“I give my advice to those who are struggling,” she said. “But to those who aren’t sick, who are healthy — don’t take things in life for granted, big or small, getting dressed, showering, cleaning, going places. But the biggest thing I took for granted and miss the most is cooking.”