Since this is the last good weather day for some time I thought I’d take mom over to see the Gateway Arch. Things were going fine and we got some great pics (to be posted later) from the observation area at the top. But all day I’ve been feeling weak, having to sit down frequently. The problem got worse on the way back to the car, with me fainting and crashing into a metal sign on the sidewalk, along with a bout of vomiting.
We finally made it back home and collapsed into my bed to recover. I was getting a bit worried thinking this had something to do with my cancer and the surgery last week and started running a few tests on myself. Pulse and O2 saturation were normal (yes, I am such a nerd that I have my own pulse oximeter...), and then I checked my BP - 88 over 59. Uh, yeah, I think I found the problem.
After some trial and error last year my doctor and I found a combination of drugs that got my BP back to the normal range. Previously we had tried some that made it impossible to get a BP reading; it took three attempts before they could measure something - it was that low. I was instructed by the surgical team that when I got home and started eating solid food again that I should resume my normal complement of prescription and OTC medications. One thing I should have taken into consideration earlier was the fact that in the last three or four months I’ve dropped about 35 lbs, and now my blood pressure may be normal without meds; with them I seem to be having problems like the ones I encountered today. I’ll have to check in with them tomorrow and come up with a new plan, but right now I am relieved to put together a reasonable theory to explain why I was so messed up today.
Funny thing about the last few weeks. I have lots of high fiber foods in my house and I’m not supposed to touch them for some time. And today, with this BP issue, it looks like I need to take in more salt to get it back up (I am hitting the Gatorade at the moment to restore electrolytes and get some fluids back in me). Up is down, left is right, and it’s a challenge to make sense of it all...