No…that title is NOT referring to the song made famous by Queen and David Bowie. It’s referring both to blood pressure and being under pressure due to it.
Most people who read my blog on a regular basis probably know i’m a bigger girl and may know about my thyroid problem. Despite being a plus sized person for a majority of my life, I have always had good blood pressure readings. It just has never been an issue for me, until last night.
I have been feeling ok lately except for my feet swelling a lot in the past week and a half. That’s  something I have dealt with before and my mom, an ex nurse, always reassured me that it was probably due to my weight. Last night, I was visiting with family and I decided to use my nanny’s blood pressure monitor to check my pressure, just for the heck of it and no concern that it would be high. I took it and saw it was 184/102. Shocked, I asked my mom if the monitor was working, really hoping to hear it was broken. Unfortunately, the words I heard didn’t match my wish. It WAS working and when my mom saw how high it was, she immediately wanted me to go to the ER. Definitely NOT the place I wanted to be at 8:30 at night the day after Christmas when I want to be spending time with family. I ended up going, though, with one of my nieces (who is also my best friend) in tow.
I really felt almost stupid to be there, but it was better to be safe than sorry. While waiting, my husband slipped on the grass outside and got the back of him all dirty and ended up going home to clean up and change. Luckily, my mom went with me,too,so she could go back there with me and see what they said.
After all was said and done, I ended up arriving home around 3 a.m. with a diagnosis of pre-hypertension(to be confirmed) and a toothache caused by a fractured tooth that I had mistaken for an abscess. The hypertension could have been caused by stress, the fact both my mom and grandpa had high blood pressure, my weight, or pain from my tooth. All my lab work looked good so now it’s a matter of taking an antibiotic for my tooth so I can get it removed and keeping track of my blood pressure and following up with my doctor in a couple weeks.
They released me with orders to return should I experience a one sided headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting,etc. which could be sides of a possible stroke due to high blood pressure. Fortunately, I haven’t experienced any of those things. Looking back on yesterday and the day before, I remember being dizzy and having to sit down at my in laws, waking up with a headache and taking advil before heading back to sleep and then re-waking with nausea, so the fact that my blood pressure could have been so high before and had I decided to push myself more and possibly dance to the wii or something, thereby causing a stroke, scares me. Could it have been more than a coincidence that I checked my blood pressure when I did and what would have happened had I not done so?
I’m only 28 years old. Last night was a sobering and scary experience and it’s not over yet. My blood pressure has been fluctuating all day and at times, it has been dangerously high. I am really praying that it’s just cause of my tooth and I still have years before actually going through hypertension.
Crossing my fingers that things will get better soon!