It sounds like a Roald Dahl story: The girl who grew too quickly.

But it’s fact, not fiction for Zara Beattie.

She has a rare illness caused by her rapid growth and it has left her marooned in her home.

The teenager is suffering from PoTS – Postural tachycardia syndrome.

It means that unless she is lying down, her heart rate can race to a massive 160 or even 180 beats per minute.

It is most common in girls and women aged 15 to 50, but Zara is just 13.

She was struggling for breath during games back in January and first started suffering serious palpitations in May.

Since then it has been a battle for her and her family to get a diagnosis and help.

For the past four months she has had to stay home, spending most of her time lying down.

Even eating a meal at the dinner table can leave her weak, dizzy and tire her out.

“It feels like someone is hitting me on the back with a hammer,” she explains.

“Going upstairs to bed almost kills me. By the time I have climbed them, the weight is on my chest, I have palpitations and I can’t breathe very well.”

Zara is 5ft 10inches and has always been tall for her age.

Keen on sport, she plays football for Abbeytown, as well as netball and rounders at school.

She remembers getting severely out of breath when doing PE on Friday, May 13 and was taken to her GP.

She says: “I’ve had asthma since I was eight and I think a lot of problems were blamed on that.

“I have not been myself since January and on that Friday in May, it felt like an elephant on my chest. I took my inhaler multiple times and still could not breathe,” she remembers.

She noticed her heart raced whenever she stood for a chest examination, but nothing showed on ECG tests because she was always lying down and her heart rate slowed to normal.

The teenager was referred to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary where she was diagnosed with PoTS in August.

She is still awaiting the results of tests to work out the best way to tackle it.

Zara lives with mum Anthea, dad Ian and granny Eveline Dugdale in Wigton.


According to the PoTS website , postural tachycardia syndrome is an abnormality of the functioning of the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system. To be diagnosed, a person must experience a group of symptoms in the upright position that are relieved by lying down. A persistent increase in heart rate of 30 beats per minute (40 bpm if under 19 years of age) should be recorded within 10 minutes of standing. Blood pressure does not always drop.


Anthea and Eveline take turns to stay in the house with her.

She has missed schooling and she doesn’t see as many of her friends as she used to.

She says: “I’m fed up and wish I did not have it, but I’m okay for most of the time because I always have my mum or gran here.

“I miss walking my dogs most. Me and dad have always walked the dogs and in the summer all my friends do it.”

Zara spends her days watching TV and box-sets.

She gets some homework from Nelson Thomlinson School, but her home tuition sessions finally start at the end of this month.

The teenager who was once so full of life might have lost the capability to go for a walk but Zara still has her sense of humour: “At the moment, my career plan is either to be a time traveller, a female Sherlock Holmes or a traffic cop,” she smiles.


PoTS symptoms: dizziness or light-headedness or presyncope (almost fainting), fainting or blackouts, palpitations, headaches, tiredness or weakness, difficulty thinking or concentrating, shakiness or tremulousness, shortness of breath, chest pain, excessive or patchy reduced sweating, gut problems, nausea, poor sleep, visual problems, bladder problems