I was in college when my high blood pressure first came up. Walking into my dorm in flip-flops, I stupidly swung a heavy door over my exposed toe. It took most of the nail with it, and I hobbled dripping blood across campus to the infirmary.
After they cleaned me up, they mentioned my blood pressure was 140/95. Well, I had just experienced trauma, so that wasn’t too surprising, but they made me come back every day that week to get my bp taken. And every day, that bottom number hovered, stubborn, around 90. They mentioned I might want to get it checked out.
But with the end of college came the end of my insurance, and it got pushed to the back burner. Even when I acquired it once again, no one was particularly worried. My diastolic blood pressure wasn’t doing anything, just hovering around 90. For years. Until I was around 27; I went in for a routine exam and that bottom number was now 110.
Suddenly, my blood pressure was important. I had to stop my birth control pills. My doctor encouraged me strongly to lose weight (I was around 20 pounds overweight). Talking with an acquaintance about someday getting pregnant, I mentioned that I wanted to finish losing weight and get my bp under control before heading down the path to pregnancy. “Oh, you’ll be a high-risk pregnancy then?” she asked.
“What? Oh, sure, I guess so.” Until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that this could actually affect a pregnancy.
Losing thirty pounds lowered my blood pressure somewhat, but not enough, so on to medication I went. It kept the diastolic in the 80s; not great, not terrible. By then we were ready to try for a family. I was switched to a med that would be safe for pregnancy, given the all-clear by my doc, started my prenatal vitamins, took barre classes, walked everywhere. I was in the best shape of my adult life. It wouldn’t be enough.
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