Coffee heat rising

Angst

Wining Time

by

Time to sit down and swill a nice glass of Kirkland’s best.

The days swirl past like water flowing down the drain. And at this age…well, that’s a pretty apt metaphor. It’s been a very busy few hundred hours of late, some of them fun and some of them not so much.

Today started out pretty fun: A special choir session in the morning, in which we got some extra-special coaching from our professional musicians, met some new choir members, and had ourselves sorted out by timbre and reseated here, there and yon.

Even though one must yodel all by oneself, in public before an audience that does include the aforementioned professional musicians, I always get a kick out this process. It usually results in a set of new seating companions, which is cool because it allows me to get to know more choir members…otherwise, being the recluse that I am, I would cling to the few friends I’ve made and never get to know anyone else. So this is good. One of my favorite Chamber Choir singers is now seated to my right, a lovely singer with a wonderful, effervescent personality who seems, unlike moi, to be afraid of nothing and no one. To the left, a quiet woman who has been around for awhile but whom I’ve never had (or made…) an opportunity to come to know. AND we’re right down in front, meaning no climbing up and down and balancing on bleacher-like things. It’ll be a little harder to see the director from the new vantage point — and that is something I rely on simply because I’m just not that experienced, as singers go. But I think as long as we’re standing, it’ll be OK.

Yesterday was a bitch, as it developed.

Last night we finally moved the current wave of copy back to our journal editor. But not without a fiasco of the first water.

Working on revamping the Plain & Simple Press website and not making much headway, I’m figuring it’s about time to knock off and go do the day’s required fucking blood pressure test. This is the best time of day, when the numbers are at their lowest ebb…and that is a desideratum, because we wish to keep Cardiodoc at bay. I’ve not yet taken a pill, but it’s about time because part of the gaming of the system entails dropping one of these minuscule doses, waiting about an hour, and then running the hated gadget. This results — well, unless the ambient temperature is in the low 60s, as it can be — in a fine set of numbers in the mid- to low 110s.

Impressive. Very impressive. If that doesn’t get the guy off my neck, nothing will. 😀

Just as I’m thinking Get up, lady, and drop a pill, in comes a message from The Kid: where is Essay 4?

Essay 4? It’s on DropBox, in the Essay 4 folder. Of course (just unwittingly typed that “of curse”). Where we put it several days ago, and happy we were, indeed, to see the end of that fine document.

You understand: some of these authors are using their gilded efforts for P&T (promotion and tenure reviews). In its current incarnation, the journal seems to be absent anyone who even vaguely resembles a peer reviewer, nor does the copy seem to have benefited from the advice of an editor who is, shall we say, gifted with a jaundiced eye. The new editor appears to be inexperienced with wrangling creatives or unwilling to ride herd on the livestock. Articles are difficult to read primarily because they’re far from ready to go to press.

That is about the mildest I can get on this subject. And yes. I do remember my mother inveighing about “if you can’t say anything nice…” You can’t.

No, says The Kid. It is not on DropBox. Where is it?

Where, indeed? WhereTF? I search DropBox: and I know that is where I stored it because I no longer stash this stuff on my local disk. DropBox has a back-up/restore function, and supposedly Time Machine is also backing up DropBox.

She’s right. It’s gone. I search “All Documents” on my MacBook.

Not there.

WTF?

I fly to the big computer, fire up Time Machine, and search directories going back a week.

Not there.

By now, I am seriously freaking out.

I break into DropBox’s website, parse my way through the nightmarish techno-instructions, and search DB’s back-ups.

Not there.

Holy CRAP! This file, which was utter diabolical torture to read, is flat-out fucking GONE.

I email The Kid and tell her I’ll have to plow through the whole.god.AWFUL.thirty.god.DAMNED.pages again, which will take another full (agonizing) day.

So I go to open the hideous unedited original in Wyrd. Of course, when you open Word it proposes to “Open Recent.”

Hmmm….  No sign of the missing files in “Open Recent.” But what do we have at the bottom of the “Recent” list but a MORE tag….ah, yes.

Click on that. Select “this week.” Wait for some unholy number of files to register in Wyrd’s memory.

And lo!

There the little bastards are!

W-H-A-A-A-T??

W-H-E-R-E??????

The things are stored in a folder — that would be a “directory” for grown-ups who use Microsoft Windows — with a title that is a long, arcane number: D123455432211 or some damfool thing. Both of them: the clean edited copy and the marked-up copy.

WTF is D123455432211????

Not caring much until I can contrive to open the things and then save up to DropBox, I stash the files, open them, and confirm that yes, they are the edited and clean versions. These, I mail to The Kid and to myself, by way of ensuring that they will not get “disappeared” again.

Whatever a D123455432211 is, I’ve never seen anything like it. Search the Internet. Whatever terms I dreamed up, at this moment I do not recall…but something that I typed into Google called up the answer. As it develops, when someone sends you a MacMail attachment and you open the damn thing, MacMail will save it into a “Downloads” folder. It does not prompt you to save the file where you want it to go. It just quietly saves in some un-findable location where Apple wants it to go. To make it even more un-findable, MacMail will designate this folder with a zillion-character numeric title.

By the time our author’s fine piece of literature has resurfaced, I am simply beside myself with rage, frustration, and horror.

Not only have I neglected to run the damn blood pressure machine, by now I’m about 5 hours late in taking the hated anti-hypertension pill. Along about 11 p.m. I gulp down the drug and test the BP. Really, it’s not that high: in the 130s. One figure is in the dramatically high 130s; the rest are in the middle range. The last time I flew into a state of Extreme High Dudgeon, the gauge reached 165/105, presumably in the bust a blood-vein category.

Unfortunately, in the brave new world of the American Heart Association, anything above 129 is now regarded as “high blood pressure.”

Questionable though I suspect that to be, nevertheless Cardiodoc takes it as received wisdom from Rome. So sticking those numbers in the record is contraindicated.

This evening they’re back down into the 110s. Those, we keep.

I hate computers.

That notwithstanding, I’ve spent a fair amount of today rebuilding the Plain & Simple Press site so that I can offer content from two completed books and one work in progress for free to readers.

This required a refresher course in rudimentary coding. Needed to figure out how to build an internal link in a web page. You understand: once, back in the dark ages, I knew how to do this. That was when my mind was young and elastic. Today: phbphphbhphphbbbt! I do not want to know it and so I have forgotten all that arcana.

Okay. I now know how to do it. Again. Probably will not remember until tomorrow. But for the nonce, code that can be self-plagiarized is installed in one of the new pages under construction.

I should take the dogs for a walk, it being not even 8 p.m. Exercise is needed for dogs and for human. But…

One is given pause.

An admired friend of mine, one of the most elegant European women I have ever met, lives within walking distance, in a tiny development of patio homes that fronts right on Central Avenue. This is within easy walking distance of the Funny Farm.

She reports that a couple nights ago someone came to her door about 9:00 p.m., rousting her from whatever she was doing and alerting her German shepherd. Fortunately she has a steel security door.

When she opened her front door, she found a guy on the other side of that security door foaming obscenities at the mouth and waving a gun around. He was in some kind of rage, he was trying to get in, and he threatened to shoot her.

She being a woman of some self-possession kept her cool, closed the door on him, and called the cops. He was gone by the time the gendarmes showed up. But as you can imagine, she was somewhat alarmed.

She speculated that he was a transient, as he was dirty and probably high on the usual drug of choice in our parts — meth.

Mmm hmm.

Well, I walk these dogs at night all the time, partly because in the summer it’s the only time they can walk on the hot pavement and partly because I’m busy from dawn to well after dusk. I never see anyone — sketchy or otherwise — wandering around after dark here. The bums are sleeping in the alleys, and the residents are nailed to their TV sets.

But just now I think…maybe not.

If there’s some drug-addled animal out there waving his gun around and threatening elderly women, I really do not want to meet him at night. Not in the daytime, either, but especially not at night. My gun is heavy and I do not even know where my father’s holster is stashed. Nor do I especially fancy the prospect of keeping two wackshit dogs under control while I try to defend myself against a wackshit human.

And so, to pour another glass of wine.

Prosit!

 

Techno-skeptic: I could’ve predicted this…

by

Friday: Dispatch to NextDoor readers…

Ohhhh the techno-life just gets better and better!

You may recall my whinging a few days ago about Cox’s announcement that it’s taking down the copper connection to our land-line telephones, and that if we want to continue to have a land-line-like set of phones (i.e., a phone in every room), we’ll have to get Cox’s digital phone service, which is connected through one’s computer via a second modem to clutter up your desk.

The Cox guy showed up: extremely nice man, seemed to be competent. Yes, he admitted: if the power goes down — no phone. If my computer crashes — no phone. If my computer’s modem crashes — no phone. If the extra annoying modem goes down — no phone.

Sooooo…now we have three ways from Sunday for your phone to die. And say what? you need to call 911? Well ..|.. very much!

Ohhhkayyy, well there doesn’t seem to be much choice here. I can buy an Ooma modem and pay a guy $90 or $180 to come over and help my untechie self connect it to my computer and attach my call-blocker to it. Or I can have Cox come over and install its wondrous modem for free. And continue to gouge me $35 a month for less-than-optimal phone service.

I decide to opt for Cox despite the rip-off, because it’s at least sort of a known quantity. The lash-up was installed Wednesday.

Two days into this Brave New World… A phone solicitor calls. I pick up the phone so I can cut off the call and capture the number in the call-blocker before the voicemail picks up. And what I hear when I pick up the phone is this LOUD racket that sounds like an unmuffled motorcycle engine accelerating: b-r-r-r-B-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R

I figure this is the robocaller SOBs doing a number on me. Hang up. Block the number. Pick up the phone and try to call another number, and when I do, I get the same racket. My phone has been taken over by a motorcycle on meth!

Now I walk across the street carrying one of the system’s handsets and call Cox from my neighbor’s phone. As usual, this entails a great hassle getting through the aggravating phone tree, but eventually I reach a very helpful tech guy.

He is beyond extremely nice and is anxious to help, but he has NEVER HEARD of what the phone is doing. But since my handset’s signal reaches all the way across the street and into my neighbor’s home, I dial up a phone number out of the device’s memory and get B-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R…, which of course he can hear loud and clear. He tries to manipulate the modem from his end, but it’s not working.

I go back to my house and disconnect the call blocker, which is in-line with the modem. This does not help.

He arranges for a workman to show up here tomorrow morning — because after all what DOES the little woman have to do with her day than sit around waiting for yet another workman, eh?

Meanwhile, he suggests I try unplugging the modem, letting it set for 20 or 30 minutes, and then replugging and testing. This I do, with baleful results.

The phones are now completely nonfunctional. You can sometimes(!) get a dial tone and if you do, you can dial out, but within 30 seconds the meth-headed motorcycle starts back up again.

Okay, I’m willing to allow that maybe there’s something wrong with my phones. But I doubt it. LOL! Guess I should be glad this little fiasco hasn’t taken my computers down. Yet…

* * *
Comes the Dawn…
* * *

So it is now “tomorrow”: Saturday.

Right about as scheduled, a new Cox guy shows up. Actually, this one is not “new” but grizzled and road-worn. This is a fellow who has had long experience. Let us, I reflect, hope that most of his experience has to do with the electronics of telephone systems.

The guy is flummoxed by the motorcycle on meth serenade: admits he’s never heard anything like it. He tests every piece of equipment on the line. He discovers an outmoded DSL connector, which he tosses. So far: nothing works. What, he asks, is really connected to this line, amongst the 6 handsets I say I have online???

Finally we figured out that the problem is the old Panasonic base, which for reasons unknown continued to operate after I plugged in then five-handset Uniden base with which I intended to replace it. Long as it was working, I just left it sitting there, giving me a 6th phone. Very convenient.

Upon examination, we realized the reason it was working was that it wasn’t really talking to the Uniden. It was plugged into the copper wiring, and so was ringing on its own: not as a de-facto sixth handset, but as an entirely separate unit. That thing, he theorized, could be causing a short.

Interestingly, the copper wiring has been disconnected and none of the outlets work anymore. Yet…wait…that phone does have a dial tone. Wot the hell?! We unplug it, and damned it that doesn’t work!

So now the phone system is working. I’m down one handset in a location close to the floor, where I might reach it if I fall and hurt myself. Fortunately, one of the Uniden handsets was in a location where I rarely go, and so I just moved it into the family room, where…yea verily, I can crawl to it if I fall in the kitchen, dining room, or family room. I hope.

Once again, then, all is well in the Brave New World. For the nonce…

{moan} Life in the Land of Old Age..

by

So….yesterday along came what appeared to be another migraine. This, during rehearsal for Sunday’s service; in addition to that, I was also looking forward to singing along at last night’s Evensong service.

Better get on the road while I can still drive without picking off any of my fellow homicidal drivers, think I. That thought thunk, I excuse myself from the service and slink away.

Back at the Funny Farm…holy ESS AITCH AI! The damn tattling Omron informs me that I’ve spiked a blood pressure reading of 165/105!!

Obviously, I soon will be leaping off the edge of this hole in the ground here and pulling the dirt in after me.

Now I’m wondering…is this really a migraine? Or am I having a stroke? Or…WTF?

Last major spike — which was nowhere near that high on either side of the slash mark — came when I was having a fine hot flash. (Can you imagine? Damn near 73 years old and having hot goddamn flashes again?)

After some recourse to the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest, I discover that a headache can be associated with high blood pressure. But such headaches are not migraines. Elevated BP, interestingly, is not associated with true migraine.

Uh huh. Are you saying, dear Google, that I am having a stroke?

These antics proceed through an irritable, headachey, cranky day. I do, however, get through the current Chinese math paper by about 9 p.m., which is…something. I guess. My head still hurts, which, one imagines, could be caused either by detailed discussion of F-tests and p-functions as they apply comparatively to the evolution of state-owned and privately-owned corporate boards or…by an impending stroke.

Stroke. Definitely a stroke.

Meditating this thought, of course, is not conducive to sleep. Not only does the headache proceed, I’m enjoying palpitations and vertigo, too….just like the ones that initially drove me to the cardiodocs.

At 1 in the morning, I get up and go back into the office and lash myself back up in the damn Omron. Still spiking at a mere 146/93 on the initial reading. This figure falls to 123/89 in the course of the full testing maneuver (which entails wasting about 15 minutes with repeated measures between resting periods — it really is an amazingly annoying procedure). But 146 is still not at all a good systolic reading. And 93 on the diastolic side? Pushing 90 at the lowest ebb? Remarkably not good.

So finally I throw in the towel and decide to swallow the first of the blood pressure pills dispensed by cardiodoc.

Here’s the problem with that. See these here?

Those are pretty typical figures over the past week. Every number in blue is a figure in the “safe” range.  Black: not great, but not life-threatening, either.

If average blood pressure is in the low 120s or the the mid-teens, then a medication that pushes it down still further will cause severe, dangerous vertigo. That’s dizziness of the fall-down-and-break-your-hip variety. Dizziness of the you-dare-not-drive-your-car variety.

This, we already experienced with the previous cardiodoc: the stuff he gave me made me nonfunctional. And believe me: with all my heart (heh!), I do not want to do that again!

New Cardiodoc was concerned enough about the occasional spikes — which usually go into the 140s but can go as high as 155 or so — that he pressed a new variety of pill on me. I’ve been resisting, because when I’m not in his office and not surrounded by strangers prodding me and yakking at me and making me take my clothes off, my average BP over the course of a typical week is about 128/83 — and that includes the spikes. Over the past week, though, as I’ve lost weight the blood pressure has lost elevation. Even with the batsh!t 165/105 spike and a couple other spikes in the 140s, this week’s average has been 125.4/84.2.

Push that down very far, and I’m gonna be falling down every time I try to stand up from a chair or the toilet.

Reassured by the Mayo’s PA, who had the common sense to observe that I’m not required to stay on these pills, and if they have an untoward side effect, I can just…well…you know: stop taking it, I decided I’d better try the damn stuff. Despite the lovely low figures of late, these spikes are damn scary, especially so because we do not know what is causing them.

The figures are routinely low in the morning — though you can see that over the past few days (except for yesterday…) they’ve been surprisingly low in the evenings, too. Normally, the BP rises late in the day. So what would make sense, if anything in this makes sense at all, would be to take the daily dose around 4 or 5 p.m., when I won’t be driving anywhere (except for Wednesdays…)

As for the headache:

Well, it’s still in the offing, and as we scribble the morning’s average BP is 121/84. Higher than it has been over the past few days, but still: not suicidal. Whether the pill pushed the figures down or whether the pressure just dropped on its own, as it always does in the morning, is now unknown.

But whatever: it is surely NOT high enough to cause my head to hurt. Which it decidedly still does.

This suggests some other headache etiology, hm?

Well, you’ll recall the fine respiratory flap that started last March and went all the way to the end of October before it cleared up?

Yes, that may have been a cold or flu (and that is why I’m trying with all my wiliness to avoid the flu this spring). But between Cardiodoc 2 and the young Mayo doc, we suspect the issue was not an infection — or at least, not one that lasted the entire 8 months — but probably allergies. Or allergies complicated by an infection. That theory advanced, Mayo Doc recommended that I double up on the 10-mg doses of plain, unadulterated Claritin (hold the pseudoephedrine), gulping down one pill in the morning and one at night.

And damned if this didn’t work! Within a few days, the head congestion started to clear up, and within a month it was gone.

Also gone? The dizzy spells and palpitations!

Turns out that in old bats Eustachian tube and sinus congestion can cause both dizziness (this is pretty common) and presyncope. In other words: I wasn’t enjoying near-fainting spells and crazy world-spinning because of the blood pressure. Those must have been caused by head congestion…which went away when the Claritin kicked in.

Past couple of weeks, I’ve been forgetting to swallow a daily Claritin. The pill-a-day lifestyle, really, is not for me. And in the absence of the antihistamine, my head has slowly been gooping up again. It is almost March again: right when the head thing started last year. Right when things start to grow in the low desert.

And so…very likely what feels like a sinus headache is a sinus headache. And it, along with the vertigo, is coming back because I quit treating it. 😮

Imagine that.

 

Siri, RESET!

by

Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! A junket to the Mayo Clinic, halfway to Payson from my house, has reset the computer where the blood pressure neurosis is concerned.

In fact I went in to discuss a different issue, which by the time today’s appointment rolled around had resolved itself. However, I decided to traipse out there anyway, because there were other things to chat about. Because I’d made the appointment on short notice, it was with a physician’s assistant and a nurse-practitioner (yahoo! two of ’em) rather than my regular doctor, who having just returned from maternity leave is maxed.

Number one headache (and today that was a literal term) had to do with the blood pressure conundrum. Took the pills out there and explained why I do not want to take the damn things, but also fessed up that yesterday I enjoyed yet another spike in numbers, into the 140s. In fact, the NP got a first reading of 159 over somegawdawful thing, though that came down considerably.

I hate doctor’s offices and I hate medical facilities and I hate having to explain myself to doctors and I’m not there unless stress and pain push me there, so of course whenever I get into one of those places, my blood pressure hovers near the ceiling.

Fortunately, a pair of the Chinese academics sent a new paper to edit yesterday, so I took the laptop with me so I could read copy while cooling my heels in the waiting room. That meant…lo! I also had my whole neurotic log of daily blood pressure readings, complete with weekly averages, an overall average, and a percentage breakdown of figures by high, medium, and low ranges.

I expected this elaborate spreadsheet would just confirm that I’m crazy, so hesitated to show it to her. But to the contrary: she was delighted to get the data. A-n-n-d…she was not at all fazed by the occasional spikes into the 140s. She said it’s the average that matters, and that under 130 is not very threatening, although one would like to keep it as low as possible to protect the kidneys and heart from potential damage.

I pointed out that the American Heart Association (which is partially funded by Big Pharma…) insists that ONE reading in the 140s or above is enough to put you on pills. (The British Health Service, in contrast, states that a consistent pattern of 140+ readings over time is the criterion.) I also pointed out that AHA guidelines recently changed; what used to be designated “moderately elevated” (readings in the 130s) is now considered to be “prehypertension” that must be treated, that readings in the 120s are now the “moderately elevated” range, and that the desired range is now in the 110s. She shrugged that off: clearly not impressed.

She said with an overall average of 128.4/83.3, she probably would not prescribe medication at all. However, she did agree that some of the startling spikes were a concern. And she also agreed that the drug Cardiodoc prescribed (or any of them, for that matter) had the potential to cause some serious dizziness since my BP is often in the low 120s…and even, of late, in the teens. On the other hand, she thought there was a good chance the very small dose would have no side effects at all. She suggested that I simply try the drug on a day that I don’t have to drive anywhere and see what happens. In fact, she proposed that I try it during a time when the numbers are spiking.

I said I’d been told it takes two weeks to take effect. Not so, said she: it’s a 24-hour pill, and if it’s gonna work, it will work within that period. She said it isn’t necessary to get “on” it for any length of time to see what it will do. And if we don’t like the results, the obvious response is simply to…well…stop taking it.

Wow!

So relieved was I that I decided to stop in my favorite mega-supermarket, which is on the way home from the Mayo, buy a bottle of Cabernet, and take a flying leap off the back end of the wagon. Then, go to bed and sleep away the remaining half the afternoon.

Last night was pretty terrible: after coming home around 10:30 from a choir shindig in a restaurant (nothing like a club soda instead of a glass of wine to make you the life of the party…), the evening BP readings were in the stratosphere. Then — perhaps consequently — I slept badly, woke up at 5 with a hot flash, and found readings that were still elevated by the light of dawn.

Well, the Mayo Lady pointed out that scarfing down a basket of salty French fries after having had nothing to eat since about 2 in the afternoon would tend to jack up one’s blood pressure numbers. I thought that was a long-term effect, not a one-off sort of thing, but apparently restaurant food will do the job on your BP readings right now. Yes, I do know better than to eat that kind of junk, but by 9:30 last night I was too hungry to care.

So I fly in the house, grill a lamb chop and some asparagus and serve those up with some leftover polenta and a tomato and a couple glasses of cheap red wine. Yes!!

Then I stagger into the back of the house, fall into the bed, and sleep for a good two hours. Phone rings; chat with friend; fall back to sleep.

Roll out of the sack along about 5:30. Feed the dogs, pick up the kitchen. Break out the Omron. And this is what happened:

Holy mackerel! And think o’ that: 108/74? 110/72?!!?

Clearly what is missing from my life is red wine…

Seriously: at 10:30 last night the average of six figures was 144/85.8. Less than 24 hours later, all but one of a similar set of figures is under 120.

You can guess what would happen if I took a blood pressure drug when the underlying blood pressure was in that range. I wouldn’t even be able to stand upright.

Do I have a conclusion to draw from this?

Well, yeah: One conclusion is that obsessing over the blood pressure is probably driving my blood pressure up.

The other is, I need to go to the Mayo, not to a doctor in the wild. Mayo Clinic physicians are salaried employees: they have no incentive to overprescribe treatments and medications. Not to be driven crazy or bullied into unnecessary treatment is worth the endless drive through the homicidal traffic.

And finally, what is needed is an occasional glass of wine.

Prosit!

 

Ouch!

by

The honored Back has been out of commission for a week, taking a hip with it. This, I think is the worst back outage I’ve enjoyed since Anna the Ger-Shep was a pup, when she put me in the hospital by charging a passing mammoth pick-up and trying to bring it down by the oil pan — dragging me with her. Yesterday I was in so much pain I could barely walk around the house.

This predicament is not helped by the allergies to aspirin, acetaminophen, and ibuprofen… Nor, we might add, by the stress-inducing blood-pressure conundrum.

So crippled up have I been that I’d pretty much decided this must be It: the osteoporosis in that hip has decided to assert itself, so now must be the time for a hip replacement. Holeeeee shit! Just what I need to make my life fun.

This conclusion: especially because if I did anything to hurt myself I don’t know what it was. Or it wasn’t very credible. The pain started after I walked three miles one afternoon: two alone, and one with Ruby the Corgi, who goes right along at a fast clip. But that puts us into the “not very credible” zone (not to say the Twilight Zone…): I walk three-mile stretches all the time and never induce any back or hip pain. That is the proximate event…but we have no evidence that it was the cause.

WhatEVER! Yesterday I was seriously crippled up.

That didn’t stop me from accepting a last-minute dinner invitation from my son last night. Managed to get the pooches into the car, but he had to get them out and, later, put them back in.

And herein lies the interesting development:

Over dinner last night, I fell off the accursed Water Wagon with a resounding thud. Lost track of how much box wine I swilled, but it was plenty. At least three glasses, but when you’re refilling a few drops at a time, it’s kinda hard to judge.

By the time I got home, the back hurt a little less. Yes, I had done a set of physical therapy exercises at his house, whilst he was cooking. But…they haven’t helped one little bit over the past week or so. So there’s no reason to think they would have helped then. Probably the grape-derived anaesthetic was what did the job.

Meanwhile, let us say I happened to acquire a little jar of herbal pain-killer. You’re supposed to rub the stuff on your bod’ to evince a magical mystery rheumatiz cure. Right.

Welp, any port in a storm. So I smear this stuff on around the sore joints.

This morning, I roll out of the sack, spend an hour or so fiddling with the dogs and killing time, and then take my blood pressure — an annoying procedure scheduled twice a day. I expect to spike high, because alcohol does jack up your BP.

But…..lo!

Now, I’ll say: yesterday the BP was relatively low (not on target, but not alarming) throughout the day: Average 128/79 despite one reading of 136/84. But still: that was after three weeks of booze-free living. And…in the absence of the, uhm, analgesic herb.

It’s unlikely that said herb’s active ingredients will be absorbed into the bloodstream through the skin. Human skin is fairly impermeable. Although nicotine is absorbed readily, most chemicals that we come in contact with — detergent ingredients, for example — are not. Nevertheless: an average systolic below 120? And two readings at 116/7n? Shortly after ingesting a different chemical well known for its capacity to inflate blood pressure score?

To coin a phrase: holy sh!t.

Throw open the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest (i.e., the Internet) and google the active ingredient + blood pressure. And damned if there isn’t a study — in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, which has an impact factor of 12.5(!) — showing that the stuff did in fact reduce blood pressure in a small test group. The authors theorize that the result was caused by the ingredient’s tendency to reduce stress.

Yeah.

The back is somewhat better this morning — still hurts, but walking up the hallway no longer requires bracing oneself against the wall. The fact that it’s getting better suggests (maybe) an injury, rather than crumbling bones. This morning after a hot bath, I rubbed a bunch more of the magical  mystery cream into the hip joint and lower back, and also into the mastectomy scars, which are fine during the day but in the wee hours hurt enough to wake one out of a sound sleep. If the active ingredient actually does absorb through the skin, presumably by this evening I’ll be relaxed enough to reproduce those figures — preferably without benefit of the vino.

In herbi veritas?

Life’s Daily Vicissitudes vs. Blood Pressure

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Or, we could say, vicissitudes vs. your health…

Okay, so here’s what happened:

1) A friend noticed the post in which I whinged at great length about Cardiodoc and the crazy blood-pressure reading in his office taken, after a nightmare drive down there, by a clerk who didn’t know what she was doing and…oh, hell, on and on and freaking on. She remarked that stress indeed does jack up your blood pressure, and that you can often bring the numbers down by deep-breathing for a few minutes before allowing yourself to be subjected to the test. If you’ve ever taken LaMaze or yoga or voice classes, you know how to do this breathing technique.

2) I think…oh, yeah? That sounds like woo-woo. A brief Google search shows it is not woo-woo and that indeed, a study has been done that shows a five- to ten-minute period of controlled breathing indeed can lower blood pressure numbers. Yea verily, no less an authority than Harvard University reports the results of said study. Indeed, there’s a gadget — which the Mayo approves(!) — that can help with this scheme. Alternatively, silently repeating a mantra about 100 to 150 times will also do the trick. One such mantra is the Ave Maria, in Latin (not the English version), which I can rattle off as easily as my usual mantra, “Quit that damn barking!”

3) Izzat so? think I. Okay, let’s test that little fucker. Why ohhhh why do I not believe it? So along about 5:30 in the afternoon, I take the usual series of three readings, one after another, as instructed by the cardiodocs who have harassed…uhm, seen me. Then I try a brief period, about three to five minutes, of deep breathing, the kind I was taught to do in LaMaze classes and then later by a yoga instructor. And… God help us, here are the results:

Got that? Systolic pressure — the one that really counts — dropped from 136 (on the high side of “moderately elevated”) to 129 (on the low side of “moderately elevated”) after just a few minutes of relaxation exercise. That’s seven points. Diastolic, interestingly, rose a point…

4) I think that is batshit crazy and prepare to disregard it. But still: I’m kinda impressed.

5) A night goes by and the next morning SDXB shows up at the door with NG (New Girlfriend). This alone is enough to raise my blood pressure, but, as usual, that’s another story. We go out and walk for an hour or so behind North Mountain. Then we go to a restaurant, where I have a cup of iced tea and they reveal their right-wing tendencies. Which is OK, but…blood-pressure enhancing. On the way, we have been discussing the craziness that is Phoenix-area traffic…and…just as we’re all agreeing that given our choice we would stay off the roads here, the sounds of brakes and a CRASH erupt behind us. The woman behind us has been rear-ended by the chucklehead behind her. By the grace of God, she was far enough behind us to miss rear-ending SDXB’s car. But it was a close call, and it was evident that her passenger was injured. In the Suspicions Confirmed Department: charming.

6) So I am stressed when I get home. Also very hungry. I fix a fairly hefty meal of a couple lamb chops, grilled potatoes, tomatoes, and spinach braised in butter with almonds and pine nuts. And I have two glasses of wine and a fistful of chocolate chips. (Bad!) Then I start to tear around to pick up the backyard, the kitchen, and the house, test the pool, cope with barking dogs, dodge the daily cop helicopter buzz-over, pay the bills and…and…

7) As all this controlled chaos is going on, I think “What would happen if I tried the deep-breathing thing with the BP monitor, right now in the middle of all this hectic racing around?

Hmmm…. As noted in this spreadsheet, I did not wait several minutes to “rest” before running the BP monitor. Between the first and second test, I did about three or four minutes of deep breathing. The second test, interestingly, registered a 10-point drop in systolic pressure; five points for diastolic. Trying again without the fancy breathing maneuver got a rise in PB of four points. That notwithstanding, 125 is within the permissible range for an old bat like me.

Average BPs were 132/80.8 last night and 125.7/81 this afternoon. Last night: after sitting quietly before testing, and including one (1) test with deep breathing. This afternoon: no rest before the first measure but with deep-breathing before the first and second measures; with no deep breathing between the second and third measures.

Normally, if I did not sit and rest before the first measure, my blood pressure would be several points higher. I simply hate, loathe, and despise the blood-pressure test — not because it’s uncomfortable especially, but because it’s a damned time-suck and because it makes me nervous. I just really, really do not enjoy this procedure, whether done at home or in a doctor’s office. It stresses me out every time, and I suspect that alone elevates my blood pressure.

So what is implied here is that deep breathing before the first effort this afternoon, done — against all advice — directly after eating a large meal, after drinking alcohol, and after hassling around physically, probably pushed the first measure down significantly, to 131/80. Since my average blood pressure readings over the entire month of December was 133/83, always taken on an empty stomach and after resting, that is very probably a nontrivial difference. Certainly 121/75 is nontrivial.

What if my belly were not stuffed and I had not just scarfed down two glasses of wine and I had been sitting quietly as usual and then had tried the LaMaze/yoga/chanteuse breathing maneuver?  Welp, we’ll have to wait awhile for that part of the experiment. But…it’s interesting, isn’t it?

By the time I got to Cardiodoc’s office the other day, I was in a rage. I’d encountered two truly crazed drivers, one of whom tried to get me to break the law before doing so himself. I was trying to balance a computer and a blood-pressure machine in my arms when the receptionist shoved a bureaucratic form in my face to fill out — one that I’ve filled out three times already, identically every time — and then demanded that I dig out a bunch of Medicare and insurance cards that she also had photocopied three or four times already in the past and that had not changed. Before I could fill out even half a page of the damned form I was called into the back office, where an apparently oblivious underling took my blood pressure incorrectly — clearly had no training (or if she did, it hadn’t registered in her pea brain…).

So, if stress and annoyance affect your blood pressure — and they most certainly do — then it was not surprising the figures elicited at Cardiodoc’s office were outrageously high.

Do they justify putting me on a medication that will make me sick? Possibly, if the numbers were consistent. But they’re not.