Hello, hypertension

I hate doctors, medicine, pills, hospitals, and everything related to that. Well, maybe except for the Discovery Health channel, which I love to watch.

But, it turns out I’m no robot after all. I am pretty disappointed with myself, I must admit. I thought I could take on any amount of stress, deal with it, shake it off, move on, and be as good as new. Right?

Wrong.

In the last few months, I’ve been waking up with headaches even after 8 hours of sleep (which is rare, but still). And, sometimes, the headaches last all day long… Moreover, any significant excitement (positive or negative) also tends to cause my head to ache later.

While I casually blamed the headaches on my life style and all the stress around it, gradually, this new ‘headache’ thing started to significantly affect my everyday life, and just wouldn’t seem to want to go away.

So a month ago my mom suggested I buy a blood pressure monitor. I listened (which is also rare).

I never really monitored my bp before, except for when I was pregnant with Will. My bp was high then, but I blamed it on the pregnancy, naturally. So it's been a discovery for me that my baseline blood pressure is high (above 140/100 first thing in the morning). Based on my bp logs of two weeks, I have hypertension, stage 2 (the last one).

Last Monday was a particularly stressful day for multiple reasons, and my blood pressure spiked to 190/110. I spent that night in the ER.

Tomorrow I have my first family doctor appointment to get additional testing and get on a bp medication. I feel like a grown-up now – I have a family doctor… Haven’t had one since I had a pediatrician back in Russia.

I don't know if this thing is temporary or I'll have to be on meds indefinitely. Honestly, I don't really care right now -- I just want to get my bp under control and the headaches gone.

My 2010 New Years resolutions list should be interesting…