Poen's Place

The last couple of weeks have been a roller coaster.

We hired new people and I have been having to write training material and workflows and then I  have to train and be a mentor to one of them.   Before they were hired, I was trying to be optimistic about it all, but as I started the training materials, I started really thinking about my tasks ahead.  I don't like teaching.  I really don't think I'm any good at it, no matter how well I know the subject.  Huz does his best to reassure me and so does my boss, but my anxiety has been creeping up.  Then, just before they started I got a nasty cold and I was out of pto.  Great.  More anxiety, more stress.

I usually fight going to the doctor, but this time I went in without hardly a second thought.  Can't miss work.  The doc tells me it's a cold, it's a virus, and there is nothing he can do.  Lovely.  On top of that, when the nurse took my blood pressure it was really high, about 160/104 if I remember right.  No wonder I have been light headed and headachy with no energy or stamina.  Great.

Okay, it's just the stress at work that's causing it, it'll go down.  At least that's what I kept telling myself.  I decided to get a blood pressure machine anyway while I was getting cold stuff at the pharmacy.  Just in case.  High blood pressure does run in my family, so it wouldn't be entirely surprising if my time had come.

Well, it did.  All week I kept checking and rechecking.  Staying home and quiet, I did get my bp to drop 20 points, but 146/101 isn't much better.  I lost hope.  I decided I needed to get out of the house and so we went out Sunday night.  I come home and it was back in the 160's.  That confirmed it for me. 

The new people started on Tuesday and I was anxious all day, even tho they are great people.  Wednesday I went in to my regular doc and she confirmed my fears and put me on a bp med. I went about Thursday depressed but trying not to be.  It didn't help that I had to go to the bathroom about 20 gazillion times either.  The new pill is a diuretic.  I've never been on a diuretic before.  Its very inconvenient.  For someone who has never really had to go to the bathroom all that often in any given day, it was quite annoying.

It's starting to ease off, but I am having to be better about a few things.  Like making sure I really have enough water in a day.  I dehydrated myself yesterday by accident because I didn't really feel thirsty and just didn't think about it.  Oops.

Anyway, all this along with a persistent cough from the cold, I was feeling really old and tired and like I was falling apart before my time.  However, I got over it and have accepted it, and am finally starting to feel better and get some stamina back.  My bp is still a little too high but the doc said it would take one to two weeks before I really started to see it drop.  I have however, lost about five pounds.  Guess I was retaining water and didn't realize it.

Hopefully I will continue to feel better and this pill will bring my bp down into the correct range and all will be well again.  What's one more pill right?

Besides, considering everything that I have the potential to get, and the fact that I know people going thru a lot worse health troubles, bp isn't too big a deal as long as I stay on top of it.