A student faints “almost every time” she leaves the house thanks to an invisible condition. Kimberley Rhoades says she faces a daily fear of whether she will "crack her head" when she passes out.
The 25-year-old has postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS) - and it means she faints if she is slightly stressed, whether in a university lecture or at the supermarket. But now she is using her condition to raise awareness by getting her girlfriend to film her when she passes out and sharing it on TikTok.
She has already amassed two million followers on the social media platform. Kimberly, from Pittsburgh, USA posts videos of her fainting episodes, as well as skits and her singing, to her TikTok page, where one viral video has more than 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 and moved in with Kimberley after they connected over their shared struggle – which sees both 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. Typical symptoms include dizziness and fainting.
Kimberly was diagnosed with PoTS on January 11 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 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, who studies English at Pennsylvania Western University, has had to give up many of her hobbies, such as theatre and doing princess parties. She said: “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, and has nearly two million followers. 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 favourite 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.
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.
“I faint almost every time I leave the house. The bright fluorescent lighting, the walking, the talking, the crowds, everything like that can trigger me to feel like I’m going to faint.”
Kimberly explained that generally people react kindly to her videos, but not always. “The majority of people are so kind, not only with my PoTS videos but with my acting and singing too,” she said.
“There are some hate comments, saying I’m faking. I don’t need to fall over on camera for views. I know that I have lots of other talents and things that I could offer up, and I don’t mean to sound pompous by saying that.
“I wish this was fake. I really do because my life would be so much easier.”
But Kimberly does not want to be defined by her PoTs, especially online, saying: “I just don’t want my PoTs to be seen as my niche. I guess I just don’t want to be put into this category of a disabled content creator. Like, that’s all you are. You don’t get to do anything else.
“I want to be able to act and sing, and I want to be able to do my skits and show people who I am. I just don’t want to be known as the fainting girl.”
Kimberly’s chronic illness means she has missed out on a lot of social events with friends and classes at university, so she will have to graduate later than expected. She said: “I can only do so many classes at a time.
“It’s not just the fainting. It’s the brain fog. It’s the lack of sleep. It’s the depression along with it.
“It’s so difficult to deal with every day, you do have to miss normal things.”
Hannah began following Kimberly’s TikTok content to feel like she was not alone with the illness. After following each other and doing an Instagram live together, the pair began video calling each other every night in June 2022.
They met in person in October, and by Christmas they moved in together. Kimberly said: “I think that it would be so hard to be in a relationship with somebody, at least for me, who doesn’t understand PoTS.
“Having somebody that understands, and vice versa, just makes all the difference.”
