Everyday Randomness

In all the sadness I forgot to mention something that I think is a good note. I mentioned earlier I’ve been worried about my own Grandma as well because the doctor said her blood pressure was extremely high.

Well this morning I walked up there to help her do her test. She’d just eaten although I asked her not to eat until after I gave the test, so I had to wait 30 minutes before I could get the “official” reading because eating can raise your blood pressure. I was getting bored so for curiosity sake I decided to test her anyway 15 minutes after she ate. She was talking up a storm telling me about the doctor, and she had just drank a cup of coffee…she drinks the 50% less caffeine type.

Her reading was 142/68. That’s still high, but that’s majorly lower than what she tested at the doc’s office…212/101. She’s only been on her hypertension meds for 1 days, so I don’t know if they’ve had time to effect it that much.

We waited another 30 minutes, then I had her sit in a straight back chair with her back against the chair for 5 minutes, and I didn’t let her talk. After the 5 minutes her blood pressure was 129/62. I don’t know if it’s the medication, but it made us both feel a lot better to see her numbers so low.

I asked her to tell me exactly what she did the evening she had to go to the ER. First of all there was the extreme pain from her knee that I’ve already mentioned as well as how stressed out she gets when she has to go to the doctor. She’ll stress herself into a panic attack. On top of that she told me she drank a canned Pepsi at home, then she went to dinner where she had 2 glasses of tea. Normally the only caffeine she drinks is the 1 cup of 1/2 caffeinated coffee each morning. Of course I’m by no means a doctor, but I’m smart enough to know stress, pain, and caffeine can cause an inflation in blood pressure.

I gave her all the information on the DASH diet and helped her write out a grocery list. She’s going to start using only fresh veggies from her garden or frozen veggies. She still has the option of canned veggies without salt, but she wants to avoid accidentally picking up the wrong thing. She really wants to take this change of diet thing seriously even though the doctor didn’t order it. It’s still something that will help greatly, and Hubby and I are thinking about trying it ourselves.

I’m interested to see how the rest of her readings go this week, and I can’t wait until she goes back to the doctor next week. I want to see if her blood pressure is extremely elevated again being at the doctor’s office.

Now I’m off to work on my resume. I’ve been doing some data entry work for a company in Atlanta, and I thought about how different I bet most Atlanta resumes look from my own. There are so many professionals in the city. If I want to pick up any new telecommute clients from the big city I better really make sure my own resume sparkles.