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Saturday, May 19, 2012

Blood pressure results and MS issues

Can you believe that after waiting over one week, I STILL haven't heard back from my general physician's office after I left a detailed message on how my blood pressure has been dropping too low?  Ugh!!!  I'm so glad I took matters into my own hands and called my endocrinologist (Dr. Raman) rather than continue to wait and wait and wait.

My appointment yesterday was not with the doctor but with Maria, one of the nurse practitioners.  She didn't feel my blood pressure readings had been too low, but they had been low FOR ME.  I was not feeling well and needed to do what I could to make this better.  To get a clearer idea of what my blood pressure readings are throughout the day and night, I was hooked up to a blood pressure monitor to wear for 24 hours.  I was allowed to take it off to bathe or get dressed or undressed and was told to try to live my life as usual to get an accurate read on my b.p.  When I took the monitor in today I ran into the doctor, who asked me to just wait a few minutes and he would have the results before I left.  My parents and I waited in the front room of the office and a very short time later, one of the nurses appeared and let me know the readings were normal and Dr. Raman didn't see any reason to be alarmed at this time.  When I had her read some of the numbers to me, my "awake" readings were actually much higher than usual and my "sleeping" numbers were quite low.  I think I will probably need to be on some sort of blood pressure medication but not as high a dosage as I had been taking.
The funniest thing about wearing the monitor was having it on when I went to bed last night.  My Jinger loves to spoon with me so she was asleep and I had, apparently, already passed out.  The cuff tightened on my arm to take my blood pressure reading and the sound of it in the dead silent house scared the living crap out of her.  Jinger practically leaping out of her skin and scurrying to get out from under the covers woke me up and this pretty much happened every hour on the hour, the entire night.  I shouldn't giggle as I remember this but it was cute in a very pathetic sort of way!

Aside from worrying about my blood pressure, which has already leveled off since I stopped taking Lisinopril last weekend, the pain in my pelvis and hips has kept me from being as smiley as I would like.  OK, that and my right leg feeling as if it weights at least 200 lbs.!  Ohh, wait, that's not all.  Everyday (or evening) during the last 3 or 4 days, I have not been able to make it in time to the bathroom before peeing quite a bit in my panties.  Yeah, I feel sooooo attractive, sexy and all around desirable when this happens!  I hope this is only temporary as I cannot wear pads.  They give me the most horrible rash all over the place and it's not worth the hassle to wear them.  I bought two packages of panties just a few weeks ago, knowing I was having bladder difficulties so I wouldn't have to do laundry as often as I had been so I'm not going to worry about it too much.  I try to laugh it off as much as I can but there are days when, even though I'm usually alone, it's still terribly humiliating.

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