Life's Wake Up Calls

After 12 long years, I finally have a family doctor. It isn't that I haven't received medical care, I have. I just haven't had a family doctor due to a shortage, so it was wonderful to meet the new doctor in my community and be taken on as a patient. Woohoo!

The bad news. He took my blood pressure and it's really high. This is a bit concerning as I've always had low blood pressure and I can't think what might have changed that it's so high right now. He's advised me to take my BP twice a day for the next two weeks and then he wants to see whether I need to go on meds or not. I can guarantee you I won't be going on meds and will be doing whatever I need to do to lower it.

I've been going on my regular bike rides around my area first thing in the morning, getting up as early as 4:00am to catch the sun rise. I've been richly rewarded in some of the photos I've captured and awed by every single sun rise. After wondering how far I really rode my bike, I finally downloaded the app to map my ride last night and remembered to set it a couple of blocks from home.

Although I'd been told my bike ride was probably only 10km, I kind of figured it was closer to 15Km and I was correct. It's actually over 15Km and I figure, based on the couple of blocks I missed today, it's probably about 15.25km for my circuit. I may have to start doing that twice a day to get my blood pressure down, although I haven't seen any one thing that'll do it, and do it relatively quickly.

I have to admit to being quite shocked at my blood pressure, and perhaps a reminder to take better care of myself. But that's what happens when you have no family doctor, you don't have any one doctor to keep tabs on anything. I had my blood pressure taken a couple of times over the last two years and both times it was normal/low, despite the stress I was under. I rarely went to the doctor, as I figured my issues were minimal.

I guess this was my wake-up call.