Went to the doctors this afternoon. Over the past 6 months, I've been having blood pressure issues. For most of my adult life, I've been a fairly consistent blood donor...I got my 4 gallon pin from Puget Sound Blood Center before moving to this side of the state. Every time you give blood, they check your blood pressure, and mine was usually in the 130/80 +/- 5 range. Not good, but not bad either.
Yeah...the last three times I've had it checked, I've been roughly 150/106. Yikes. That was twice at the blood bank(turned away...you'd think I had AIDS or something) and then just two weeks ago at my annual work physical. Enough was enough...finally decided to make an appointment with a real doctor.
Things went about like I thought they would. It couldn't be as easy as 'sure, here's a prescription, carry on smartly'. We had to talk about some of my lifestyle choices. I knew I would regret not lying to the nurse when she asked how much beer you drink each week. My told me when she was working as an LPN at Group Health, they used to tell her to double what people actually said. If this poor girl didn't take me at my word and doubled my reported 8 a week...well, no wonder she rolled her eyes. I DID NOT let the doctor know about my jar of bacon grease in the fridge...he didn't ask, why would I tell...I was there to talk about blood pressure, not my cholesterol.
Lecture over, I was given my prescription for lisinopril, and sent on my way with a list of other instructions. It was recommended that I keep my sodium intake between 2000-4000mg a day(this caused my wife to lose her mind...her marching orders are not to exceed 2000mg...even a healthy person shouldn't be eating 4000mg of sodium a day.)
There was also a list of high sodium foods that I should avoid...and number one on the list was not bacon(thank gosh, it was #4) or beer(didn't even make the list)....it was canned vegetables. Doctors orders to not eat nasty canned green beans?!?!?
I should have seen this guy when I was 8 years old!
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