Terror

I find doctors very frustrating.

I have had the same tests done over and over for the past five years, by nurse practitioners, primary care doctors and specialists. They don't find anything wrong, except that my blood pressure is always a problem.

Eventually each one decides on an approach and sticks to it, but the blood pressure problem gets better and worse in seemingly random ways.

A medicine will seem to be working and then suddenly everything runs amok. What has worked (a little) for several months will suddenly start to deteriorate. The doctor will make a change in prescriptions and after three doses I find myself with my heart throbbing in my ears and my blood pressure almost too high to measure.

My current doctor, a kidney specialist, realizes that he cannot measure my blood pressure accurately in his office He relies on me doing it at home, but before we settled on this method I was removed from a drug that had worked to some extent for years.

After having two terrifying reactions to medicine during the past four months I wish I was back on my old medicine, but he is unwilling to try it.

So tonight I am once more getting ready to try the second dose of a new medicine and wondering if an hour later I will find myself with a reading of 226 over 116 with a pulse of 126. That fear alone can be part of a self fulfilling prophecy.

At this point I have almost zero faith in any of my doctors.