238.0 – New Year… New Frustration

It’s been a while since I’ve written and I’ve got quite a few updates to make.  I woke up this morning and got on the scale… a whopping 238.  I’m happy to have not tipped the 240 mark, but it’s dangerously close… and I don’t like it.

Not only that but I’ve been dealing with some health issues recently that are directly related to this extra weight.  I went to the doctors a few weeks back (on a Friday afternoon) to get treated for a sinus infection.  While I was in there, they took my blood pressure (as they always do when you go to the doctor) and it was very high.. 148/100.   This is very rare for me as I can’t ever remember having high blood pressure at any point in my life.  I figured it MAY have been due to the fact that this reading was taken just a couple of hours after the Sandy Hook incident but it still worried me.

Fast forward to Monday morning.  I inadvertently skipped one of my Z-Pack on Sunday, so I took two on Monday to “catch up”.  Later in the morning, I was sitting in a meeting and began feeling “dizzy”.  Dizzy is probably too strong of a word, but I just didn’t feel right.  I was also dealing with some heartburn (tightness in the chest, etc.).  This continued till later in the evening and I really started getting worried.  I’ve been through the whole “I’m having chest pains from acid reflux… but it must be a heart attack” many times before.  In fact I’ve taken myself to the ER multiple times for just this.  However… I’d never had a high blood pressure diagnosis either.

So… back to the urgent care I went.  They gave me an EKG which was completely normal.  I went back to my primary care doc the next day and he suggested that while it wouldn’t show anything, he wanted me to have a stress test (scheduled for the 17th of January).   He was also rather upset that I hadn’t been taking my acid reflux meds and told me to start again ASAP.

He’s thinking that some weight loss paired with taking that medication will bring the BP down to the point where I don’t need to treat it.  I’ve had that in the back of my mind during the holidays and I’ve been trying to watch what I eat / drink but it obviously hasn’t worked with the number on the scale this AM.

It’s time for a change… and not a “New Year’s Resolution”.  I’m working on a plan both for eating and exercising that will finally make this year different…

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