Holy Freaking Guacamole: What to expect when you are expecting Perimenopause Part 2

Y'all.  I have become the Pied Piper of perimenopause, scaring the bejeesus out of all the women younger than I am by leading them down a trail of the future horrors they are going to face.

Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating for effect. OR MAYBE I AM NOT.

I've already shared about the frozen fricking shoulder, which is doing better in that it hurts less, but I still can't move it very well.  Wine consumption has gotten less fraught, but I can really only have a glass or two at most without repercussions.

 But wait, there's more!

So let's just roll this out in story form, ok?

So last Sunday was Mother's day.  I woke up early per usual. A few hours later the kids came down and were snuggling on me for extra lovings for my special day.  All of a sudden, Christopher goes "MOMMY! Your EYE!!! What's wrong?! It has BLOOD in it!!"

Indeed.

I went to the bathroom and saw a spreading blossom of bright red in my right eye. That's weird, I thought. Let me see what Dr. Google has to say.  Since I wasn't coughing, sneezing, or had trauma to my eye, I decided to check my blood pressure.  145/95.

Indeed.

I have had very low blood pressure most of my life.  I'm usually around 105/70.  Dave and I compete over who has the lowest blood pressure and I always win.  If I ever get a score over 110, I ask for a repeat and do deep breathing.  The one time I have not had low blood pressure was when I had preeclampsia with the twins, and had to take Blood Pressure meds for 3 months afterwards. I had forgotten about that until this week.

ANYHOO, back to the story.

It's been a stressful few weeks. Thinking that my anxiety had caused a blood pressure spike,  I took a Lorazepam and meditated for a bit.  Then I decided to take a shower and get ready for the day.  All of a sudden, a wave of nausea and heat came through my body.  My vision started to tunnel and I felt very, very strange.  I took my blood pressure again and it was 170/110.  Oh, dear. I took another Lorazepam.

Dave and I started to head to urgent care, but a friend who is a nurse suggested I lie on my left side and deep breathe for 5 minutes.  I do. And my BP goes down to 135/95.  I decide to hang out on the sofa for a while.  Plus I'm so freaking stoned from the Lorazepam, I don't really have many options.

The next morning, I email my primary doc (male) who says it's stress and I should continue taking my anti-anxiety meds.  Since I'm still hanging around 135 to 140/95, I dutifully take my meds. I also spent most of Monday like a zombie.

Here's a newsflash: When I have anxiety, a Lorazepam makes me normal.  When I'm not having anxiety (and I usually don't and I usually DON'T take Lorazepam), I have discovered that it sedates me way, way too much.  (And I take the lowest dose) Y'all: there is NO WAY that episode on Sunday was an anxiety attack.  I'd already taken medicine and I had meditated. I would have to have some serious skillz to be having an anxiety attack that cause my blood pressure to spike that high.  It wasn't anxiety. It was something else.

So I had another episode on Tuesday, with another very high spike in BP.  My regular doc was on vacation so I went in to see another one.  A WOMAN.  Of a certain age.  She did NOT think I had anxiety.  She said, Yes!  You are having high blood pressure; the intake reading of 150/92 and her viewing my medical record with its history of being very low might have helped.  GUESS WHAT SHE SAID: Hormone change!!  Perimenopause!!  F.T.S. Come to find out, quite a few other women at this same stage have had the same thing happen.  Are you KIDDING ME!?  Why didn't anyone warn us?

Anyhoo, back to my eye, which at this point, the lower half is nothing but blood. It was lovely, and I had enjoyed scaring the crap out of colleagues and students for the last 3 days. She was concerned about eye damage and sent me to an ophthalmologist. The end part of that story is there was no optic nerve damage and I might have glaucoma.  But that wasn't the most interesting part of that visit with the MALE ophthalmologist.

Nooooo.  The fun part of that 10-minute encounter with him is his repeated insistence that I do NOT have high blood pressure, that my anxiety was causing all my high readings, and I had obviously scratched my eye in my sleep because that's what happens 90% of the time, and I have no idea, no insight, no possible knowledge about my own body or my own health experiences.


via GIPHY

OK. 

So I started my BP meds because I trust my *new* general doctor more than I trust anyone else right now.  And guess the eff what?  My blood pressure is back down to my normal.  But more importantly, for the first time in MONTHS, I feel like myself. I don't have a constant headache. I'm not nauseated all the time. I'm sleeping.  I'm eating. I'm happy. 

I'm sure it could be many other things.  Correlation does not imply causation. I could be wrong.  Perhaps this was all stress related and I'm an idiot with no insight into my emotional states and general functioning and all the other women I know who've had this same weird incident during perimenopause are all idiots, too.

Nonetheless. We will wait and see.  I'm on a very low dose of this med b/c I'm usually so low with BP anyway. I do think that occasionally I'm going a bit too low, but I think that is not althogether unusual for me, too. I can try exercising more (I'm only running 3 miles at a pop instead of 4; maybe that's it? That 4th mile really cuts down my BP?).  I can lose more weight (although I'm down to my pre-twins weight which is normal for my height). I can try meditating twice a day instead of once. 

Or let's let Minnie Driver express my thoughts at being told (by male doctors) every time I turn around that it's anxiety and stress. 

So yeah!  Getting old is SO MUCH FUN, y'all!!  I'm sure you can't wait either.

I'm actually just glad it looks like this week I'll be able to stick around a bit longer.