So This Happened

Until a little over a year ago, my high blood pressure was under control. Then my ankles started swelling, and it was traced back to one medication in particular that I'd been successfully taking with no side effects for the last ten years.

My PCP took me off of it and switched me over to another. My ankles returned to normal, but then I noticed my numbers slowly started creeping up. Concerned, I paid another visit to my PCP about two months ago. and my BP in the office was something like 185/90. She was not happy about this and gave me a couple Clonidine. That brought the pressure down (and nearly put me to sleep on the drive home, unfortunately). She added another medication (not Clonidine) to my daily regimen and referred me to a cardiologist.

The cardiologist at first didn't want to change up any of the meds. You need to lose weight and cut out salt, blah, blah, blah. I told him I never added salt to anything and he replied with a very curt, "Do you eat anything that would rot if you left it sitting out for more than a day?" I said of course. We all do. "All processed food is full of sodium." In the end, he agreed to make one small change, swapping out one diuretic for another.

So Ben and I started walking in the evening and he—very reluctantly—stopped salting our shared meals while cooking. My pressures weren't getting any better, so I emailed the cardiologist and said, "Look…my numbers are still super high and this is unacceptable. Can you either put me back on what I was originally taking (I'll deal with the ankles) or try me on something else…even if it is more expensive and has some annoying side effect?"

So two weeks ago he put me on 400mg of Labetolol twice a day. It worked. In fact, it worked too well, so I cut back the dosage. Once I did that the numbers started creeping back up and were now just as bad as they were before I went on the drug to begin with, even though I was back on the originally prescribed dosage. I emailed again (because I'm not due to see him until November) and told him what was going on.

Yesterday afternoon I started developing a headache as I was driving home from work. By the time I got home it was somewhere between a 5 and 6 on the Richter scale. When I got home I took a couple aspirin and fixed a snack. I got a third of the way into said snack and the headache shot up to a 10. I broke out in a sweat and became so nauseated I thought I was going to throw up. The whole thing felt like food poisoning to me—something I've dealt with more than once so it's not like I don't know the symptoms. While I was trying to figure out what I ate at lunch that might've triggered this (because it's almost always what you ate before the last thing you've put in your stomach), I decided to check my BP.

Holy fucking shitballs, Batman! 220/110.

So TLDR, once Ben got home we headed to the E.R. where I was tested and actually treated like a human being for a change by some of the best E.R. staff I have dealt with (at least since I actually worked in a hospital and everyone there knew me): IV hydration, EKG, blood tests, an analgesic for the headache, a bit of Benadryl, and a dose of Clonidine. Blood tests and EKG both came back normal. And while I was fighting to stay awake when all was said and done, I was feeling much better by the time they released me.

And I finally heard from my cardiologist while we were waiting to be seen. He wants me to double up on one of the other medications.

The BP was 140/77 this morning. Let's hope that holds and it isn't just leftover Clonodine in my system…