Blood pressure variation?

[Bob Eager]

8mg of doxazosin had virtually zero effect on me. Now on irbesartan and aplodimine.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I have no daily salt intake limits

Not really compared with the three tablespoons I took yesterday for dehydration and cramps.

And asthma is not caused by salt.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Amlodipine has weird mental effects on me and caused my legs to swell up. It is not a good drug.

[Paul]

You can compare what you know about your own condition, to an article.

"Complications: cumulative brain damage"

They're such comedians.

And if you're hitting 200, that's at the top of their chart here. I've seen some other chart, where the value is compared to how long you can survive at that level (hours, or minutes).

You've probably got a bit more headroom left there, but I wouldn't be doing that, all that often. When I hit 200/100, I headed off to emergency at the hospital that's a 10 minute drive from here.

*******

My grandmother died by dissection. Undiagnosed hypertension, caused a blood carrying vessel to burst. My sister tried to do CPR (she's a trainer for it), but, of course it did no good, because my grandmother was just bleeding out inside. It was only after the autopsy, that my sister discovered why the CPR didn't work. My sister was pretty bummed, right after the attempt didn't work. My sister felt she'd let grandma down.

We quite frequently had Resusci_Anne sitting on the livingroom couch. That's the dummy you use for training people on CPR. There's also a Resusci_Baby. They don't all look the same as the samples here.

Paul

[Bob Eager]

Weird, isn't it? No side effects and it works really well for me.

But other drugs (for other purposes):

Now, gabapentin - that was bad. And so was amitryptaline.

[Chris J Dixon]

Indeed so. Not for the first time, my BP was noticed, during an unrelated medical treatment, to be higher than they would like, so my Medical Centre was informed. They rang to enquire if I had a BP meter and asked me to do a set of daily readings and ring back in a week.

I don't think they have their new procedures sorted yet. When I rang back with the figures, they declined to write down the two numbers and asked me to email them. A week later I have had no acknowledgement. I know they are busy, but it should surely be automatic to let me know they have received my email.

Chris

[Andy Burns]

People may either conciously, or sub-conciously cherry pick readings, or the times of day they take them, perhaps to hide problems, perhaps to emphasise them ... I can see why doctors would put little store in them.

[Ophelia]

People may either conciously, or sub-conciously cherry pick readings, or the times of day they take them, perhaps to hide problems, perhaps to emphasise them ... I can see why doctors would put little store in them.

====

Our doctor is interested in home readings! My husband is having to check his at home and give them to the doc!

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You are told to take them at the same time each day. And usually to do it three times, and give the lowest reading.

[Chris J Dixon]

I was asked to take it morning and evening.

Chris

[The Natural Philosopher]

My GP ASKED for my sets of readings

[Paul]

I've found by experiment, the doctor will accept favorably, an Excel chart showing systolic/diastolic/heartrate, but they turn up their nose if you offer 700 lines of text :-)

When I offered sheets of numbers to one doctor, he looked at me and said with that you-should-know-this look on his face "whats the average" :-) That's the only hint I got that the doctor expects his food pre-digested. And that's where the idea of switching to a chart came from.

No doctor has ever given explicit instructions on data preparation. You shove papers at them, note the reaction, develop theories as to what they might be interested in, and work accordingly. The 700 lines of text elicited a "I don't have time..." reaction, with the doctors head barely raising to look at you.

Because I got asked the "whats the average" question, I assume their BP flowchart has them slotting the client into the category table. And that's all they're looking for. So far, I've had "zero interest" in any outlier points that are off the main band in the chart. They're not interested in why your systolic was 200 on Thursday. They're not interested in your theories what happened on Thursday either.

Category systolic BP, mmHg diastolic BP, mmHg

-------- ----------------- ------------------ Optimal < 120 < 80 Normal 120?129 80?84 High normal 130?139 85?89 Grade 1 hypertension 140?159 90?99 Grade 2 hypertension 160?179 100?109 Grade 3 hypertension ? 180 ? 110

If you reported to the doctor, "I passed out and fell on the floor", as near as I could tell, that's what it would take to get any additional interest in your data.

If you're more or less in the "High Normal", that gets a "well regulated" rating in the doctors notes.

Here's an example of a "presentation for dear doctor". Each vertical bar, is "morning versus evening pressure", to give some idea on the daily variation. This isn't of any real value, but it's just for decoration purposes, to fill the chart with color, but not draw the best line through the data. It's up to the doctors eyeball to select whatever he/she wants to select. Without the bar, my crappy inkjet wouldn't make a very clear "dots" display (scatter plot).

The doctors will not accept electronic submission. No email attachments please. No USB sticks. They take paper, they scan paper in the fax+scanner machine. The "assistant" does the scanning.

And even though FAX is a preferred means of communication, when I had an ECG done a couple of weeks ago, in the comment section the doctor wrote "FAX to phone number xxxyyyzzz" etc. The staff at the center doing the ECG said "we don't do FAX", and that was the end of that idea. So even a doctors attempt to thwart the artificial delay built into the sampling system, went unheeded. I'm sure if my doctor was in the room with me, they would have snapped to attention, once they received boot-up-ass. This is why I normally do crap like that, using the hospital facilities, because the output goes instantly into the records keeping. But on a COVID-19 day, that's no longer possible. You have to schlep in the woods instead.

Paul

[tim...]

OTOH

readings taken in the doctors office suffer from "White Coat Syndrome"

whilst doctors are careful about self readings, they certainly don't dismiss them completely

tim

[Bob Eager]

I generally take a set of readings, taken at the same time every day, in with me.

My GP is interested, and bases decisions partly on what they show. My cardiologist was also pleased to see them.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Quite. I had my BP taken before a variety of hospital procedures, and when having tests done, and nothing was mentioned. And in each case they knew I wasn't on any medication. Only after the nose bleed scenario Some months later) was it thought it might be a tad high.

[Max Demian]

Does it make a difference if it's taken by a lowly "healthcare assistant"?

[polygonum_on_google]

I was well aware of this and, for a completely different issue, plotted results over many months in Excel and printed it out.

Even while I was doing that, I was compelled more by the graph than the numbers.

Another issue, I drew where pain was occurring onto a picture of me. That was appreciated and went into my notes.

[Bob Eager]

Or a junior doctor.

When waiting to be discharged from hospital after a ten day stay with sepsis (result of a prostate biopsy), the consultant (in his fifties, male) came round with an attractive female junior doctor.

They did final obs. on me, and my blood pressure was high. I was worried they'd keep me in, but he said they adjusted it down if Cluadia did it and the patient was male.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

seen that happen...tee hee

[Brian Reay]

Oh dear....