A student with a condition that means she faints “almost every time” she leaves the house has attracted millions of views on TikTok.
Kimberly Rhoades, 25, an English student, has postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS) and faints if she is slightly stressed, whether at a university lecture or the supermarket. Her videos of herself collapsing, as well as other content like her singing and comedy videos, have garnered her nearly two million followers, with one video having 12 million views.
She hopes her videos help raise awareness for the illness and show other people with invisible conditions that they are more than their disability. Sharing the videos is also how she met her girlfriend, Hannah Stoodley, 24, who also has PoTS.
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Kimberley and Hannah moved in together after they connected over their shared struggle, and constantly look out for each other in the hope they will not seriously injure themselves. According to the NHS, PoTS is an abnormal increase in heart rate that occurs after sitting up or standing, and typical symptoms include dizziness and fainting.
Kimberley was diagnosed with PoTS a year ago in January 2022 after years of unexpectedly fainting and her stamina decreasing. She said: “I could run as a kid, but once I hit puberty, I started slowing down.
“It felt really weird – walking up steps got harder for me too. I then gradually started to faint a lot – I would randomly faint, and I never knew why. I hadn’t seen blood or anything like that.”
Kimberly, who attends Pennsylvania Western University in America, has had several concussions from fainting and falling down stairs and spends her day-to-day life fearing severe injury. The amount of times she faints depends on her stress levels, but it averages around five times a day.
She said: “It’s really hard having to go through my day constantly thinking, ‘Am I gonna faint and crack my head open today?’ I just really need to be very cognisant of my day-to-day activities.
“I do preventative things like I stay hydrated, I wear my compression socks, I take it slow. But sometimes, you know, the cookie still crumbles.”
Kimberly has had to give up many of her hobbies, such as theatre and doing princess parties, saying: “I would start sweating really badly and get nauseous in front of all these kids, so I stopped doing that.”
But she has recently reignited her love for theatre by posting videos on TikTok. She began posting on the video app in March 2022 with a ‘Welcome to my life with PoTS’ video, showing the day-to-day struggles of the chronic illness.
Since then, she has posted skits related to PoTS and videos of her singing. Her most popular video, with 12.4 million views, features her joking that she is “allergic to gravity” and explains her PoTS symptoms.
She said: “TikTok has been so wonderful for me because I’m able to use that as an outlet for my acting and singing.”
Her most viewed videos are the ones that show her fainting in public. When Kimberly is about to faint, she often asks her girlfriend to record it to show her doctor and posts it on TikTok to help raise awareness of the reality of PoTS.
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She said: “I like the ones where it’s showing me fainting in public because people really want to know how other people handle it. I think what people don’t understand is that going out in public is a very big trigger for me and my fainting, and with PoTS, you get overstimulated.
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