Okay, I'm calling it a night; I have a big day tomorrow, damn it.
I got a telephone message from the physician in the big city today, reminding me that I’m supposed to make an appointment to come in “soon†so that the details of all the tests I took can be discussed…..and also to get the cardiac prescriptions changed to something more suitable, as the current ones are causing problems.
Okay, but I’m really tired of always going in to see a medical professional.
Just really tired.
From the time I moved up here to the edge of the Sandhills in August 2001 until the esophagus exploded in August 2009, I had to go see a physician exactly two times, which seems about “average†for the preceding thirty years too.
Well, those happy days are long gone.
The visits to the physical therapist have been cut from three times a week to just once, but that still seems irksome. She’s a very nice person, and competent too; a younger thin woman in her early 30s with dark brown hair, lily-white skin, an aquiline nose, and long slender fingers—pretty much the height of aesthetics, I think—but lately I’ve been looking at her as a chore.
Because the pharmaceuticals were determined to be all wrong for me, last week I tried an experiment. It’s not the sort of experiment that’s recommended, and I suppose under certain circumstances it could be dangerous, but because I’m pretty careful and watch for things, I tried it.
I take three drugs, all of them for the heart. One of them I take once a day, another two times a day, and a third once a day. So two of them every twelve hours.
One’s not supposed to do this, and I fully understand why, but I decided I’d try to find out what happens if I were to cease taking them altogether. It wasn’t as if I was going to kill myself; if there was the least slightest indication it was a mistake, I’d immediately resume taking them.
Trust me; if something goes awry with the heart, I’d probably sense it before an EKG would.
So I went 40 hours without taking the main cardiac pill, and 28 hours without taking either of the other two. At the end of that time, when I resumed taking them again, I found my blood pressure to be 142/74 and heart-beat rate to be 67 (!) To me, those seem pretty good readings.
And without medications. However, I’m not a medical professional, and of course there’s a lot more else going on than just the blood pressure and heart-beat. So I resumed taking the pills, but will inquire during my next appointment if perhaps these dosages could be lowered, even though right at the moment they’re pretty much “baby aspirin.†I dunno, but I thought it was interesting.
