You are probably aware that when you are in pain, your blood pressure is raised. You might also know, or infer from that fact that if you are in pain for several days, your blood pressure might be elevated to what could be a “level of concern.” Apparently, that concern part is something that nurses and such really freak out about.

Let me explain.

I went in to work this morning, because, well, it is Wednesday and I do have a job. Even though I woke up and my friend Mr. Migraine was still with me. But there’s stuff to do, like take DS1 to the orthodontist to have a bracket reattached, and DS2 to get to school and bulletins to give to church administrators. Wednesday is also parish nurse day, so about 11:00 when I strolled into the main office to hand off the bulletin I sat down to chat with MSD, one of our parish nurses.

We chatted about my now 4-day old migraine, my extremely difficult and painful period and other fun topics. So, she offered to take my blood pressure and what the heck, I let her. Curiosity and all that. She takes it and gets this serious look on her face and asks if I have hypertension. Heck no! My usual BP is about 114/63. Sometimes 117/68. Why? Turns out she read 130/90. Turns out she thought that was pretty serious and I should go see a doc about getting something to knock the pain down so the BP could relax.

Of course I laughed right at her. I haven’t had insurance since Oct 13, 2006 (read: date divorce was final) and unless a bone is sticking out of the skin or an artery is cut, I’m not going in. (Such is the life of several million adults and children in this country, but that’s a post for another time.) So she asks if I have any old pain medications at home, like vicodin or something. Well, I do happen to have a couple of partial perscriptions left from 2002/2003 before my gall bladder surgery. She hands me a box with a blood pressure machine and says “Go home, take a vicodin and lay down. check your blood pressure and give me a call this afternoon. If you can’t get it to go down to a reasonable level, you really ought to go to the emergency room.”

Wow. I sort of laughed and said wouldn’t worrying about my blood pressure being high make my blood pressure go higher? She didn’t laugh with me.

I can take a hint. So I took the machine and went home. (Luckily LN’s project SMEs still haven’t responded back about when we can meet, so I haven’t really had a lot of work to do for him.) I took my blood pressure at home and it now it was 135/99. Yikes. I couldn’t find the vicodin but found a bottle with some oxycodone in it. Took a couple of those and laid down on the couch. As I felt those start to kick in, I took my BP again. After about 30 minutes it dropped to 117/89. After an hour 121/78 and after two hours it’s down to 107/73.

I do feel better. A little loopy from the meds, but my head doesn’t hurt (neither does my shoulder. Neither does anything, actually.) I’m a little worried about a rebound headache, but I guess I’ll deal with that if it happens.

While I was laying buzzed on the couch I got a phone call from YM. She has been approved for her new visa!! She has to wait to pick it up until tomorrow afternoon but she should be back by Saturday evening. I asked her to have PrJ call me back because she said she was still worried about the border crossing. According to PrJ, it’s a bit of irrational fear on her part. Just not taking anything for granted, even with two legitimate approved visas for entering into the US, she thinks a border guard will deny her entrance and that PrJ would then just leave her there to fend for herself. Which of course, he would never do.

The boys are with their dad tonight, it being Wednesday and all. So I’m just going to continue to lay here and take it easy. Chalk it up to self care.

Some other trivia of interest to no one but me: I’ve had over 7100 visits since moving This Journey to wordpress.com at the beginning of the year and 590 comments on 590 posts since the beginning of the blog in November of 2004. Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the date when I really started to post frequently and regularly so I’ve decided to steal an idea from Neilochka and include a link to the posts from a year ago at the end of my posts. For me it will be interesting to see where I was in my journey a year ago; how much has changed, how much is the same? A little perspective will be a good thing.
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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

boxing 2008

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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

boxing 2008

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A year ago (or longer) on This Journey…

boxing 2008

Posted on May 30th, 2007 under immigration, migraine, my crazy life. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.