OK, so I thought would amuse you all with tales of my disastrous life...
The last couple times that I have gone to the doctor, my blood pressure has been high. This is unusual for me, but the doctor wrote it off the first time, seeing as a lot of people will naturally have a bit higher blood pressure when the are in the doctor's office, (especially seeing as this was one of those delightful yearly "girl stuff" visits). Well, I went back again recently, and it was still high. Delightful.Â
So the doctor asked me to monitor it on my own, using those free blood pressure montoring stations that you find in drugstores and such, and then report the results back to him. He said that if my results were high because of the stress of being in the doctors office, this would show that. However, if they remain consistently high, then there is an issue that we need to address.
Well, first off - HELLO, how is it LESS stressful to check your blood pressure in a public place than in the privacy of the doctor's office?? Those monitoring stations are always positioned right by the pharmacy where there a thousand people waiting for their prescriptions. Plus, since the cuff goes around your upper arm, you have to remove whatever camoflauging garment you have on and expose your uppper arm fat to the world. Having strangers view my dangly arm fat is NOT relaxing.
But, ok, whatever, I have a mission to accomplish. So, the first day I go down to the drugstore and scout out the blood pressure machine. It is kind of a crowded day at the drugstore, so I have to make a couple passes at the machine, and spend an inordinate amount of time pretending to be interested in, like, rubber gloves, but I finally get in there when there are only a couple people around. I tried to close my eyes (so that I couldn't see if anyone was staring at me) and relax, but then I thought "what if someone sees me with me eyes closed and thinks I passed out in the blood pressure cuff", so I did it with my eyes open. It was really high. Yuck.
So the next day, I go to a different drugstore, thinking maybe I can cheat the system and get a lower reading off a different machine. This is when disaster struck. The machine was one that took a reading from your lower arm and allowed you to stand up while the reading was being taken, so I thought that was good. But, it was also really prominently placed and there were a lot of people around. But I sucked it up and did it. I hopped up there and stuck my arm in the cuff, and the machine started TALKING TO ME! It said something like "Thank you for choosing to monitor your.....blah blah blah". Now EVERYONE is staring at me and my arm fat. Then it weighs me and announces my weight out loud to everyone watching!!!!Â
So, about then I decided to bail, and I hopped off the machine only to realize that the cuff had already tightened around my lower arm, trapping me. So there was like 30 seconds of me fighting with the machine, and jerking my arm around like an idiot trying to yank it out of the cuff, and the machine teetering back and forth, before I slunk back on and just hung my head in shame while it measured my blood pressure. Then to cap it all off, when I got the (understandably) obscenely high reading, I didn't have a pen or paper in my purse and had to record the reading on a See's candy receipt with a lip pencil.
This is my life, people. And you wonder why I have high blood pressure??? Â
