It was unintentional, but revealing,
I was in my car and halfway to work when I realized I’d forgotten to take my blood pressure medicine. It’s only 25 mg of losartan, so I didn’t think it was making that much of a difference.
You know how when you are taking a medication and you don’t think it’s really helping, or that you feel pretty good, so you must not need it anymore? Well, I tried my own “fuck around and find out” experiment.
During the day, my blood pressure has been running around 140/90. I know it’s likely going up if I start to get a headache.
Without my medicine, I had a headache by lunchtime.
When I finally got home, my BP was 210/120. It’s never been that high before. I should have gone to the ER, but I didn’t. I forced myself to relax. It did go down to 170/100, but that’s still too high.
My husband fussed at me for not calling him to bring me my medicine. It never occurred to me to ask for help.
It was too early to take my emergency meds to manage my BP and anxiety. We hadn’t had dinner yet, and once I take that, I’m done for the day. So I dealt with the high pressure as best as I could.
I added a new symptom to my list of indications for higher blood pressure: my eyes were watering non-stop. Dr. Google says hypertensive emergencies can cause eye problems.
Great. So now on top of the background worry about having a massive hemorrhagic stroke, I can add vision loss and kidney failure to my list of possible effects of these hypertensive episodes.
And on the days that my pressure does shoot super high, I’m exhausted. On this day, I ended up falling asleep on the sofa before going to bed. I don’t generally sleep well when I pre-game a night’s rest with a nap, but I did fall asleep with the help of meds.
I’d love to be able to say that I don’t need medicine to keep my blood pressure under control, but my unintended study on myself did not go as well as I would have liked. As much as I typically exercise, and despite my vegan diet and resulting low cholesterol, my body is no match for my brain’s anxiety. I’m extremely frustrated by this diagnosis and would love not to be dealing with this.
I get to see yet another doctor this week to see what exactly can be done to manage my anxiety. Because, let’s face it, there’s only so much deep breathing and meditation can do to help, especially during the work day.
But if adding another medicine to the mix helps keep my anxiety abated and thus manage my blood pressure, at least I might be able to avoid these frequent hypertensive crises.
As for my experiment, I don’t recommend trying it yourself. If you need blood pressure medicine, you should take it.
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Lead photo is of my personal stethoscope and blood pressure cuff.
My anxiety has been unmanageable since my neighbor shot a bullet through my bedroom.
Do you deal with anxiety and/or high blood pressure? If so, how do you manage?
As always, I hope you all are safe and healthy.
Anne the Vegan 