chickensense

Sorry for my absence, y’all. My life has caved in, literally!  How can you be living the good life and develop high blood pressure from stress??? From doing it wrong, I guess. When you are living voluntarily poor, it doesn’t take much to knock you down, and getting knocked down too much causes stress.

A couple of weeks ago, I thought I might be having a heart attack so I went to my doctor. $413 and lots of tests later, the doctor told me my heart seems fine but my blood pressure was 180/110! (I didn’t know that was bad until I looked it up online—see the info I’ve added below.) I’m still in shock really. I’ve always had low blood pressure, always. I’m mean, it is usually around 95/75. The chest pains, the doctor said, are from stress. He got very serious as he looked me in the eye and said I needed to exercise and lose weight. Did he think that was news to me, or something?  Did he think I’d only been waiting for someone to tell me that, and then I’d be able to go out and lose it all?  (Besides, I thought, my blood pressure was fine only a few months ago and I’m the same size and in the same shape as I’ve been for years.)

I left with some sample bottles of high blood pressure meds, and a prescription for an anxiety reliever (Xanax). I went home instead of to the pharmacy, though, to do some internet research first. Now, if you are like me, you don’t know the dangers from blood pressure that high. I read online that it can eventually cause damage to your organs if not treated. I also read in a couple of places that blood pressure varies a lot so you shouldn’t necessarily start medications until you checked it over a few days. Aha! There you go! I don’t need more medicines, and I don’t need to panic. My blood pressure just suddenly got high, so, I thought, once I ease the stress it would go back to normal. (Though, of course, the reason things cause stress is precisely because you can’t control them.)

Still, I know better than to put too much trust in sources on the Internet. So the next day, I asked the Walgreens pharmacist what she thought. She said one big danger of blood pressure that high is that it is “stroke level.”  She said once it is high, it doesn’t just drop back to normal. (WHY?? That makes no sense to me.) She said I needed to take the high blood pressure medicine immediately and continue until I saw the doctor again and he said I could stop. She also said I needed to exercise and lose weight. Ack! They must all be in league with each other. . .

What is High Blood Pressure?

Hypertension is the term used to describe high blood pressure.

Blood pressure readings are measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg) and usually given as two numbers. For example, 120 over 80 (written as 120/80 mmHg).

• The top number is your systolic pressure, the pressure created when your heart beats. It is considered high if it is consistently over 140.
• The bottom number is your diastolic pressure, the pressure inside blood vessels when the heart is at rest. It is considered high if it is consistently over 90.

Either or both of these numbers may be too high.

Tweet This