chumley

Just want to share my experiance in a seperate post as I know many BE'ers have real concerns about High Blood Pressure at medicals .


Lots has been discussed in relation to White Coat syndrome

and thanks to the wonderful advice on here I have taken the bull by the horns today in anticipation of eventually getting as far as med requests and the fact that I have the scariest White Coat sydrome you can imagine


Also some pointers for those already in Canada as it might not be so easy to solve prior to Meds as it would be in the UK.

So this is my story in brief

I had to attend the local hospital a few week ago for a very minor problem I just needed a prescritption for something that would have been an over the counter med in the UK.

At the hospital they did a BP check and it was 160/100

I was told that this is not good second stage hypertension blah blah blah

I was stunned having always had quite good BP always and terrified as this would be a definite intial fail for MEDS and would need further investigation etc

And the BP was taken before I got the $140 bill for the prescription

As always I posted this major stress on here and took the excellent advice from fellow BE'ers I also immdeiately went out and bought my own BP monitor.

Well today a really lovely local GP agreed to see me to get this solved and the charge was just $30 the best $30 I have spent since I got here!

He had a fabby bit of kit and he reassured me that it all but eliminates white coat syndrome.. and he was right

The machine was an auto BP checker that actually takes 6 seperate readinds one after the other and it disregards the first as he says that will always be high for scary folk like me!
it then does an average of the other 5 readings.
He left me completely alone and went out of the room and told me to think lovely thoughts!

He has kindly agreed to provide 15 readings or more If I like for me to take to the MED as I just know it will be terrible come MED day

anyway my true average reading is 126/76 ( which is fine for meds etc) :thumbsup in fact its even lower when done at home:thumbsup so that donkey in the hospital caused me untold worry and huge expense!!

I would recommend anyone concerned about white coat terror to consider forward planning like this , it has certainly reduced my stress no end and I am no not concerned at all about the BP check at the MED ( in fact chances are that now it can be proved in advance to be White Coat BP I will probably get no prob with the reading at the mEd

By the time I have my MED ( fingers crossed etc) I shall have 15 readings taken over 3 months and a letter from a canadian GP to confirm that my BP is great!

right thats that worry out of the way so what can I stress about now??

Huge luck to all who are worrying about MEDS!!!

gibsonslanding

hi
thanks for sharing that brilliant bit of advice and in fact, i did exactly that several weeks ago and went to my gp and had several readings done over a 15min period.....i now have a piece of paper to say that i'm in the normal range!.....and that's the point really. BP is not an exact science and i've had several times when i've been 'running high' and at times it's been crucial to have a 'normal' range reading (we adopted our son and the medics got really out of thier tree, when i was running high...i had to 'prove' that i didn't have a high blood pressure problem, so that we could proceed with the adoption and i have posted this tale on here before)......

so, when we get to do our meds, at least i can woft a piece of paper under some over cautious medic's nose and 'prove' that i'm normally okay and it's only under 'stressfull times', like meds for emmigration, that i 'might' run high.....

good luck to all on this one and remember, it's not an EXACT SCIENCE AND THE 'THEY' KNOW IT.......

6 limes

Dont mean to hijack your post but my oh and I both have high bp controlled with medication, his 20 yrs plus, and hes only 46, mine just about 2 yrs. Will this be a major problem when it comes to medicals for immigration.
Stupidly perhaps I assumed that if it was under control with medication and causing no other problems it would be okay.

Zoe Bell

well controlled hypertension that has caused no damage to other organs should not be a problem.
If you want further reassurance do a search , this comes up loads of times.

I'm sure I recall Jim ( a former visa officer) saying the same thing

good luck

SAW 04

If its under control with medication it should not be an issue

SAW 04

beat me to it!

Zoe Bell

great minds and all that

6 limes

Thank you all for putting my mind to rest on that one. Now only 2468 things to worry about!!!

chumley

Just to update as I know plenty folk stress through the stratosphere re BP and meds

Had Meds last Friday not pleasant but there you go

My BP was fine after all that stressing and messing about getting 10 readings from a Canadian GP letters to take etc

didnt need them

I can bet my bottom dollar though if I didnt have that letter in my pocket it would have been sky high!

huge luck all

cdnexpat

Wow all of this could have been easily solved by a simple Holter monitor!

Didn't your GP present this as an option to you? I've given it out in cases where I suspect White coat, as it gives you a much more accurate reading over 24-48 hours.

Steve_P

I'm confused a Holter monitor is an ambulatory ECG device it does not measure BP.

woodmanbg

My husband was on BP medication when he went for his medical and there was no problem. He also suffers from white coat syndrome even when he takes his own BP at home!

chumley

dont have a GP but a lovely local Canadian doc helped me out as a favour all 10 readings over 3 months were perfect
plus bought my own BP monitor for home use which also shows perfect readings every time

reason I did all this was because I got myself so worked up over the meds I have been stressing about them for months

so nothing to solve really other than the insurance of having a docs letter made this part of the med stress free
so reason for starting this thread was to share this for others like me

good luck to all Med panic types

Cape Blue

What was unpleasant about it - you didn't have to touch your toes did you

chumley

no toe touching

did get a titty feel though yuk!!

just loathed the whole thing I simply dont do doctors etc

plus its just so important to the whole process and the bit thats out of my control

all the form filling evidence gathering etc etc is within my control this bit ie the Meds isnt