Every New Day

We all have our morning rituals and routines.

There was a time when mine revolved around jumping out of bed and eating breakfast before jumping on my bike and going on a training ride for 30 miles or so.

These days though, things are different; maybe partially because I stopped doing the above many years ago. Now, I start my day with a sip of water to wash down my blood pressure medication.

How did that happen to me? How did I end up with high blood pressure ... after all, I'm definitely not overweight .. in fact I'm only a wafer away from being underweight!

I had had a well man check up several years previous and was found to be all ok but the other year during a rain break at the cricket, I had one of those free blood pressure tests at a clinic situated at the ground. She found my blood pressure to be a little high but said there was no need to see a doctor for it .. but to mention it next time I went.

This turned out to be a couple of years later and I happened to mention what she had said so they decided to take my blood pressure and it was sky high ... 200/120 .. getting close to dangerous.

After a couple of weeks of getting more exercise and cutting out the crap in my diet, it had settled to somewhere around 160/100 which was better but not great.

It took several months of effort, healthy food etc for me to finally accept that I simply had high blood pressure and I was going to be on tablets for the rest of my life. Initially I was put on 2mg perindopril which had a small effect but after the dose was doubled to 4mg of perindopril, it finally started to come down and now averages around 120/75 which is good .... I must admit, I fought the idea of tablets, having always been healthy but I'm pleased I did now .. It's great not to worry that your blood vessels could blow any moment and it's not such a hardship having to swallow one tablet every morning really.

Thankfully, I didn't get the side effects some do apart from waking early which is annoying, though my circumstances have changed which make that not such a bad thing, but more about that another time.

My next battle is cholesterol .. apparently that is a little high .... so that's a work in progress .. I'll keep you posted.