A few weeks ago I felt off. Really off. The downside of not having been to a doctor in a few years is some things just creep up on you. To be I have had bad luck with doctors. In 2018, the nurse practitioner (not a real doctor. Sort of.) I was seeing told me, with days to go before my first half marathon of the season, that if I ran the half in Carmel, I was going to die. It got in my head. At Carmel, I thought about dropping to the 10k. My name was already printed on the half shirt though, so... with the pseudo- doctor's words in my head, I hit my second worse Half time of 3:54:55. A month later, I did a bit worse at the Pig. It would be 4 years before my next attempt at a half, a painful 4:35 at the Foot Levelers. I remember using the port-o-pot late in the race and not being sure I could make it. I was taunted by my playlist going rogue, with ever-loving songs such as "It's a good day to die" and "I pulled my Groin." (The latter had a rather good beat, but damn it, I was really in pain. In my groin. It was mocking me.)
So, my health has not been the best over the last few years. And with the last doctor I went to refusing to even give me blood pressure medicine because I wasn't treating my sleep apnea... (I went to try to get an ENT referral because my throat was closing up while I was walking around outside. Not like allergy, but like airway sealing shit and needing to kind of "pop" it back open...) So... he became obsessed with the apnea and then didn't do anything about my BP. (I had a prescription for BP medicine that had run out.)
Anyways, in the middle of January I was really feeling off, and I knew something was very wrong. Brain fog, pain, issues with standing up and balance, nausea, chest pain, and general ennui. I could barely keep my lesson plans caught up day to day. I had a rare flicker of clarity (barely a flicker at that) and realized I needed to check my blood pressure right then. And... my school didn't have a monitor. I don't know if that is a surprise or not, but I got online and ordered one from Best Buy, picking it up on the way home.
182/104
Half an hour later, 192/110
The next day, as it jumped to 196/99, I decided I needed to deal with it. So... I walked to the urgent care. (Yes. I am aware that 190 is well into the call for an EMS range. That's why I walked, so if they made me go, my car wouldn't be stuck there. And it is like halfway to the new hospital for what that was worth.) By the time I got there, they read my BP as 179, so... I at least got a new order of Lisinopril. After a week of that, my BP finally stopped hitting 180 regularly.
That is when it got weird. I took the day off for a doctor visit (it was scheduled before I checked my BP the first time, but new patient takes a month to get in.) By that evening, I hit 116/77. It was back in the 140's the next morning but has generally been better.
And then... I did a 5-mile race. I was about 2 minutes slower this year compared to last, but after finishing the race, I could tell something was wrong. I was not quite right. I was seeing what looked like spears of fire going out like a wheel in my vision, and a quick birthday lunch at Red Robin didn't help. We went over to the mall, and I still wasn't stabilizing. My (new) watch wasn't able to get my SPO2 reading and was struggling with my pulse. I had my wife drive home, and once there I found my BP had his 97/66 (which the BP monitor said was ok, but was actually listed as Hypotension, and my heart rate was staying over 100. Yeah‽
It eventually got back to the hypertension of the low 140s (uh, somehow better?), which makes me feel a bit more normal, and my mind a bit sharper, but... Overnight my HR was ranging about 10 bpm higher than normal, and even now, sitting down, it is resting at 100 and my BP is still volatile. I pushed too hard with 5 miles, perhaps. It doesn't change that I have a half marathon in 2 months. I have more foot-miles in so far this year than I've had since 2019, and I should be in a better position when I get to that race. Still, I'll just need to overcome my own health in the process.
