Soooo....

K,


Ummmm, hi!

Awkward, a bit, isn't it, coming back from such a long, long break. Anyway, I've really got to snatch off to bed, since apparently, I'm a wreak. However, I feel as if I need to give a bit of an update? Because you're my friend.

So today I got reamed out for my blood pressure.

Reamed. Like, reamed. I've never been reamed out this badly for anything in my life before. I've been trying to schedule a meeting with the headache clinic for over 6 months now, and today was my appointment. Because I had been trying a different headache preventative medication, I went off my hypertension (high blood pressure) medication.

Apparently that didn't go well.

Blood pressure is ideally 120/70 or lower in healthy individuals, and shouldn't be higher than 140/90. Today mine registered at 148/96.

So I had a lovely meeting with a medical student and the nurse practitioner, and we sat down, and it was soft and warm, and we talked, and I felt that they really cared, and we had some moments. It was a nice meeting. It was very heartwarming. I think if the medical school would have taped it, and my fellow colleagues and I would have critiqued the nurse's technique, we would have found perfection.

I sat twiddling my thumbs for about 5 minutes, reading the informative screensavers that told me that MCV means "Mean corpuscular volume" of the red blood cells, but I still didn't remember what elevated or lowered MCV suggested what diseases (which I should know.)

And then the doctor blew in with sphygmomanometer blazing. He practically ran into the room, dragging the mobile blood pressure cuff on creaking wheels and had the nurse strap the cuff on me again to take my blood pressure once more. Then it began.

I won't mince the words. Let's just say that apparently at the age of 23 I am not allowed to have high blood pressure anymore. Apparenly everyone in the neurology department and possibly the hospital has migraines, and that is not a problem. If I don't get my blood pressure down, the doctor is going to hunt me down in the hospital or medical school and shoot me.

(He told me this.)

...So.

Um. Ran to the other Doc. Told him that if I didn't get my blood pressure down I was going to die because the neuro doc was going to shoot me. Thus, my schedule.

Tomorrow: EKG, Echocardiogram, Chest X-ray
Tuesday: Renal Ultrasound (for renal artery stenosis.)
Wednesday: MRI (That's for my head. Because the neuro doc did care about that, too, I suppose.)

Gosh I hope I'm not too screwed up. At least my lab results were all fine. (Though my thyroid function tests were none too high, let me tell you!)

Love you, wish me luck. Looks like I'll be a bit busy this next week. I'll let you know what I find out.

A