Getting Old... High Blood Pressure Hypertension

I guess this is part of life, another phase everyone has to go through. When we were younger, very much younger, you start noticing changes to your body in your teens. You starts growing taller, hair starts sprouting at all the places the sun don’t shine, pimples... and you discover you are growing muscles... yeah great now you have strength.. strength of an adult, biceps gets bigger and you notice you dont get sick often. By twenties.. man, you feel you are indestructible. Healthy as can be, strong and so full of all the possiblities you can achieve. Everything is yours to take. Thirties sailed by.... a wife and family. Still feel indestructible and the good life will go on forever. By Forties, it creeps up on you.. you start to realize your mind is still like it is, but your body in no longer obeying your instructions... a game of badminton will require 3 days of aching rest. Then your eye sight starts to go blur... cant focus need reading glasses.
Well thats not to worst part, because your body is changing again, more like now its going downhill...
For me, there use to be some numbness and stiffness around the neck area, headache so a couple of Panadols will wipe the pain away, then from Panadol to Synflex.. until i went to the doctor for some run on the mill cold. You starts to notice something different when the doctor took your blood pressure, then she retake your reading again. Uh-OH.. not too good.

So now, i have High Blood Pressure or Hypertension. 140 - 105. Doc said the low ones is worrying, suppose to be 80-90. So i need to cut down on salt... a bit hard when kicap (soya sauce) is staple food that goes together with Chau Kueh Tiaw, Half Boiled Egg and Bak Kut The and exercises.

I am now on some medication, EnaHexal, suppose to control the pressure. It took about 3 months before there was any effect in lowering the pressure. My last reading was pretty good, now under control. But this drugs has a side effect, it make you cough. Yes cough. When I started on the medicine, the cough was just a little discomfort, now its like I am having TB or something, very dry and hard cough. Worse is, the cough happens usually at night. When you can disturb not only yourselves but those around you.

There are other medicines, but since the doc say it is effective for me and the cough will go away once my body get used to the medication.

A quick search on the internet mention the cough side effect as just cough, but I tell you, not this cough, its mother of all cough, literally squeeze all the air out of your lungs and sounds equally bad.

More importantly, I need the exercise… haha exercise….

-SC

Heart Sick (1)

It was a perfect Sunday on May 28, 2006, and I felt perfectly well that morning and decided to take my bike for a morning ride at the nearby jogging track. However, after barely a few kilo metres later I felt breathless and very tired and thought it was probably due to late night TV, so I rested at the roadside.

But it didn’t get well enough even after 20 minutes of rest, so I decided to load my bike back onto the van and headed home. It felt like some gas trapped in my body and I felt this ‘fullness’ and it was uncomfortable. The doctor at the neighborhood clinic thought I was just having a gastric and I got myself some gastric pills… My conditions didn’t get better after 3 days so I went back to the same clinic but this time another doctor was holding the fort and he decided to give me some ‘better gastric pills’.

I couldn’t sleep at nights as I would cough whenever I was lying down, and that prompted my third visit to another doctor at a clinic near my office; this time I got myself some cough syrup. I returned to the clinic after 2 days trying to find out what was wrong as my stomach felt ‘full’ all the time and I could only sleep for brief moments by sitting next to my bed; I would start to cough as soon as I lied on my back! I felt terribly weak and lost my appetite… I was given some sleeping pills this time around!

About 14 days after my first visit to the clinic, I noticed my feet were swollen, and even my stomach was bloated to the point that I couldn’t buckle my pants… I could feel the chill at the back of my neck; I knew something was not right…

I went to a gastroenterologist and there were good news and bad news… Good news was there’s nothing wrong with my stomach, or kidneys, etc but only some water instead of gases that caused my bloated tummy; but this was also the bad news, as water doesn't just stay in the stomach like this and the doctor noticed from the x-ray that my heart was ‘slightly enlarged’… I was referred to a cardiologist immediately and within 15 minutes after the cardiologist checked on me I was lying in the Intensive Care Unit!

The ECG showed that I had a Heart Attack. My Ejection Fraction was below 30% and I was told my condition was ‘critical’…

-HS