Unexpected excitement
I wasn't feeling my best this morning, but went to work anyway. My first call of the day was a supervisor call and I'm not sure if it went sour because I didn't feel good or if it was just a bad call that then made me feel worse. Either way, I knew something just wasn't right with me so as soon as I got off the call I left and went straight to the doctor's office. I knew I wasn't having a heart attack (otherwise I would have gone to the emergency room), but the doctor's office wasn't so sure after they discovered my blood pressure was dangerously high. I'm not sure how high the first reading was, but they immediately whisked me into a room and did an EKG right then and there. After that they took my blood pressure again (it had dropped to 160/120) and told me to wait for the doctor which I took as a good sign that I wasn't going to be sent to the emergency room, whew! Turned out my EKG was normal, but my blood pressure was still way above my normal reading of 110/70. I can thank my screwed up back for the fact that they had four months worth of blood pressure readings in my file so they knew what "normal" was for me. My doctor then sent me off for a chest x-ray. After more waiting and a couple of more blood pressure checks, she came back and said the chest x-ray looked fine, no cancer or tumors or anything to worry about except... well, there was one spot that they weren't sure if it was just a shadow or something else so they were going to send it off for an expert to take a look. More waiting and blood pressure checks until finally my blood pressure dropped down to 148/92 and they decided it was safe to send me home. I even have the okay to go back to work tomorrow. But I do have to check my blood pressure every day for the next week until I meet with my doctor on Tuesday to go over the data and discuss the issue. At this point I have no idea what's going on, but apparently it is possible to go from having normal blood pressure to Stage 2 Hypertension in just under a month's time. And it seems that my doctor isn't going to speculate on that or anything else until she sees the week's worth of blood pressure readings.

I have to admit I was a little freaked out by the whole thing. I was certain I wasn't having a heart attack, but after the nurses' reactions I started to wonder if maybe I was wrong... after all, my father was about my age when he had his first heart attack. And it was a long time between the end of the EKG and when the doctor came in to tell me the readings were normal so I had plenty of time to play the "what if" game in my head. Damn it, they should have something to read in these exam rooms besides the "How to Manage your Horrible Disease" pamphlets! Then rinse and repeat the waiting game for the chest x-ray and while I was ecstatic in the end to learn that everything was hunky-dory, the process of getting to that point was not fun. Now I just have to make sure I don't spend a week playing another "what if" game with the Stage 2 Hypertension possibility and end up giving myself a real heart attack :)