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White Coat High Blood Pressure

Apparently, there is a phenomenon where some people have high blood pressure when they're at the doctor's office.

I also learned from Wikipedia: "Recently, the JNC 7 (The Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure) has defined blood pressure 120/80 mmHg to 139/89 mmHg as "prehypertension." Prehypertension is not a disease category; rather, it is a designation chosen to identify individuals at high risk of developing hypertension," which, even on my best day is me.

And I learned that high blood pressure can cause renal (kidney) problems. I had some kind of kidney problem when I was little and so that worries me.

And BLINDNESS. Hypertension can cause blindness. CRAZY!

I'm going to try to step up my blood pressure monitoring to twice a day or more when possible. Lately, I've only been doing it in the morning after I wake up or while I'm getting ready for work.

Ideally, I would measure at the same time every day, but my schedule is somewhat irregular, which makes that difficult. But, on the bright side, I'm going to do this for a month and then I'll make an appointment with a doctor to see what they think.

I really would not be surprised if I do have high blood pressure. But I also really don't want it. I especially do not want to take medicine every day. Alternatively, there is no medicine to fix death, so if a blood vessle burst in my brain, I would be far more inconvenienced.

This is one of the few times in my life when I have actually been very disappointed in my biology. I wouldn't say that I'm a perfect specimine of the human animal or anything. I was born short-sighted. I was born into a family afflicted with addiction, cancer, insanity, diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity and bad teeth. But, in all, I have been pretty fortunate and am unaccustomed to having to deal with chronic or congenital weaknesses.

I survived Scarlet Fever! I kicked its ass!

But now my heart is beating too hard. Or my blood vessles are too skinny.

I'll not dwell on this idiosyncracy as anything of metaphysical value, indeed, it's just a fact of reality. But it'll be tough.

If I go on medication, I'll have to make sure my doctors know I'm on it. I'll probably have to make sure that I check the lables of cold medicines. I'll be worried about getting into some kind of horrible accident in which I can't tell emergency medical people about my condition and I'll wonder if I should get one of those bracelets. blah blah blah...

But it's better than being dead.