10 days since my last blog entry – you have to wonder if my heart has been in it.
Well – I can honestly say it’s been a rollercoaster 10 days, and as a result – no it hasn’t been.
Firstly – I got the results of my “official” blood test results back, or at least so I thought. I got a text message from the doctor’s saying the test confirmed slightly high cholesterol. Nothing about Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). Great, I thought, I’m not diabetic after all!
Of course – that wasn’t an excuse for me to quit my efforts to lose weight and get fitter – I’m not that stupid. All my reading around the topic of T2D told me that the big surprise was I hadn’t been diagnosed sooner! I had many of the risk factors. So, I still considered it a kick up the backside and that I should take my health more seriously. I’m not getting any younger.
The raised cholesterol reading – which bore out what the private blood tests I’d taken told me – was still a concern, and as a result, I invested in a digital home blood pressure reading device. I did some homework and bought one approved by the British and Irish Hypertension Society (BIHS) and European Society for Hypertension (ESH), as well as recommended by national health authorities in both the UK and Ireland. I have actually since seen this on the shelf in a number of pharmacies.
It arrived last Sunday, so I took my first reading that evening, expecting to find nothing untoward. Instead, I was shocked to find my blood pressure was very high. The first reading came out 180/108! Well, at first I had no idea what that meant until I found this:
I was in the “Hypertensive Crisis” zone – ie, consult your doctor immediately!
At first, I thought maybe I’d bought a dodgy cuff, but had a friend with me and took her reading which came out perfectly normal, well under the safe zone.
A little panicked I took another reading – maybe the first one was wrong? I took the second reading and was “relieved” to find it came out lower – 164/102.
But still both my systolic (first/higher number) and diastolic (second/lower number) readings put me solidly in the stage 2 high blood pressure zone!
Trying not to panic I went to bed, but my first reading the next day had me definitely back in the panic zone – 200/116!!!
I called my GP but it was too late to get a morning appointment. However, when I told the receptionist my BP she promised she would speak to the GP after surgery and get me a call back. The call never came.
In the afternoon I had a reading of 196/113 so called again. The receptionist didn’t even apologize for not calling me back, but very helpfully (not!) told me I’m in danger of a stroke! That did nothing for my stress levels at all. By that point, it was too late to see the GP so she recommended I call 111, which here in the UK is a step down from the 999 emergency service (equivalent to 911 in the US, 112 in most of Europe).
Basically, it’s an NHS triage line designed to help direct non-urgent cases that can’t be seen by their GP.
The 111 receptionist asked a bunch of questions, then said they’d get a “clinician” to call me back. This was around 4.30pm. I waited. And waited.
At 10.45pm my BP was 180/108.
I waited. And waited. But at this point thought I’d be better off just leaving it til the morning and making an appointment to see my GP.
The next morning I woke to see two missed calls on my phone – one just after midnight, another at 3.10am. It was an unknown number so I looked it up and found, yes, that it was a 111 callback number! So it took 7 1/2 hours to get a callback. Good to know.
My GP surgery’s phone line opens at 8.30am, so I was on the phone by around 8.10am knowing there is always a big queue for appointments. When I joined the queue I was number 8.
40 minutes later I spoke to the receptionist to find that there were, once again, no more GP appointments. She then offered me a video call appointment with Livi which is yet another NHS service designed to help address the shortage of GPs. Basically less busy GPs are made available via video call.
So I installed the Livi app and waited for the GP to call. I spoke to a doctor by video conference and she agreed there was a potentially serious issue, and prescribed me a low starting dose of 25mg of Losartan to reduce my blood pressure. Since she couldn’t examine me in person she was reluctant to go higher and recommended I go to my local walk-in clinic which is at Teddington Hospital.
I am always reluctant to take medication if it’s not necessary and since I still thought (hoped!) that my home blood pressure cuff was broken, I went over there to validate the diagnosis.
When I got there the waiting room had about 25 people already waiting and I was told to expect a wait time of an hour or more.
However, I’d barely gotten comfortable when I was called by a nurse. I wasn’t arguing. However – immediately the nurse said I really shouldn’t be there at all! High blood pressure is not something they can deal with. I told her I’d been recommended to come by the Livi GP and she said that was simply not the right advice.
Regardless, she took my blood pressure with a big impressive-looking digital monitor – and I got the highest reading I’ve ever had – 206/112!! To put this in perspective, I’ve since downloaded a blood pressure tracking app and this won’t even let me record any reading over 200! Probably they expect you’ll be on your way to the emergency room or dead before it gets this high!
Still, the nurse just told me I need to either go to my GP or to my local A&E (Accident & Emergency), which was at Kingston Hospital.
I was really not feeling very confident of the support I was getting from the NHS at this point as you can imagine.
So I headed home, picking up my prescription on the way, and I took my first 25mg Losartan pill around midday, hoping for the best.
It certainly made an impact as my next reading later in the afternoon was down at 158/99 – the lowest I’ve seen so far – although, of course, still in “stage 2 hypertension”. Note that at this point the Livi doctor had told me that each time I take a reading I should in fact take three readings and only record the lowest one so that’s what I did.
I took one more reading before bed, and it was at 176/105. Not great, but I thought maybe it would be better once I slept on it.
Nope. My morning readings ranged from 188/119 to a “best” reading of 176/114. Still not great.
I took my daily 25mg of Losartan thinking that once this kicked in then, like yesterday, my BP would go back down.
Nope. My next set of readings ranged from 182/120 to a stonking 201/128!
Not only that – but while up until now my pulse reading had been a healthy 60-70bpm, now it was at 83bpm! I also had a mild headache and tingling in my fingertips. Was I in danger of a heart attack? Or stroke??!!
That reading literally triggered a panic attack, and I called 111 again. Since they had my records from my call on Monday they prioritized my call and I did actually get a call straight back. The clinician took me through all the possible symptoms of stroke and “cardiovascular events” and I had none of them. The symptoms I did have were more in keeping with a panic attack.
The 111 clinician told me to try not to worry! But at the same time, told me I should go back and see my GP within the next 3 days.
“Not to worry”. Easier said than done. Through this week I’ve struggled to concentrate on work, let alone do any exercise or think about my diet! Work was starting to really stress me out as I couldn’t focus.
The next morning I set an alarm for 10 to 8 and was the first caller on my GP’s queue. I just left the phone running on hold for 50 minutes while reading and got an appointment for just after 10 am.
Finally, I got to see my own GP. To be honest, I forgot to ask for him by name before. To be very honest, it’s so long since I’ve been to the doctor that if you asked me my GP’s name I couldn’t have told you!
All credit to him for reassuring me. But there was a lot he told me that was not at all reassuring!
First off, I gave him a bit of background, how I’d come in due to concerns about diabetes, but that was all clear. He looked at his notes. “When did they do the blood test for diabetes, I don’t see that here?”
OMFG – despite me coming in two weeks before purely for that purpose the blood tests they’d done did NOT check for diabetes!!! Can you believe it? Is that medical negligence?!?
He was frankly baffled about what they had tested me for. I’d separately been told I needed to come back the following Monday for some more blood tests – he again couldn’t understand what those tests were for. They were irrelevant to the problems I’d been having, and again did NOT include diabetes! So he changed the tests I was scheduled for so they will now include diabetes, thyroid function, etc.
So – the big bad news is that I most likely DO have diabetes after all. As well as high blood pressure! FUCK.
Of course, I won’t know for sure til these test results come back.
Back to my blood pressure – he took it again with an old-fashioned analog BP monitor, and it was still around 160. He looked at what I’d been prescribed and literally tsk’d, shook his head, and rolled his eyes. That was way too low. He then prescribed me 100mg daily – 4 times the dose I was originally taking!
I told him how much I was stressing about all this, and how it was affecting my work and he agreed that I should definitely take some time off work. My managers have been really understanding and are fine with me taking a week out and that is a real load off.
Since I’d already taken 25mg of my meds that morning before my GP appointment, I took two more of the 25mg pills in the afternoon for a total of 75mg – I figured that would ease me gently into the higher dose.
My evening readings were all fairly consistent between 158/103 and 159/113.
Then this morning they were back up again – between 171/119 and 188/116. I have of course now started on my 100mg daily dose so hopefully that will help. My doctor explicitly told me to STOP TAKING DAILY READINGS! It will only stress me out!
So that’s where I am really.
It looks like my T2D thing is still very much a possibility. I have a blood test on Monday which will confirm. And I still have my ultrasound booked (this Tuesday) to address my concerns about pancreatic cancer.
And I’ll just keep on taking the tablets and see how I get on.
Of course, now I have a bit more leisure time, I finally remembered to weigh in. More on that in my next post!
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