And that will be enough of that

Just returned home from an evening spent in the tantalising presence of the lovely Lana at Mother Francis Hospital's emergency room. Physically captivating she is, with that patina of toughness - rigorousness really - that good nurses develop to disguise the emotional reality underneath that we all possess. Lovely woman as I said, who I may seek out to ask for a date; certainly I have no remaining modesty, dignity or reservoir of shame unrevealed to her any more. On the other hand, she also knows I have no communicable or blood-born diseases and a reasonably well-paid job with decent health insurance. Take the good where you find it I always say.

Pending her descent into social questionability, I did come away with a quantity of amlodipine besylate, aka: cumadine. I've been waking up in the middle of my sleep with a sensation of overpressure throughout my body lately. Without any notable degree of excess fluid retention. Millions of people live with high blood pressure, I'm no different from any of them I expect. I'm still going to find out what happens when I get rid of a third of me.

My other departing gift (not really, I had to go to a pharmacy and buy it also) is something called protonix. I presented in the ER as a rule out heart attack patient. I was pretty certain I was suffering (and that's the proper word, believe me) from pronounced gastric distress that was radiating throughout the thorax. To the degree that my back muscles were going into spasm and I was sweating uncontrollably. I don't have any of the other sensations commonly associated with acid reflux or heart burn, but the upper abdominal muscles clenched in the seizure from hell more than makes up for it, trust me. I'll see what my regular Doc has to say, but 'till then it's down the neck with one of each every day.

Two rounds of blood work, an EKG and an x-ray and apparently my heart is in surprisingly good condition - no qualification, just surprisingly good, so there's that. A blood pressure reading of 218/142 probably isn't one for the record books, but it's a distinction I can do without, thank-you-very-much. F#@k me ragged, I'm only in my 50's and I'm already going completely to crap physically. Things is gonna change around here. I fully expect to live 'till something kills me, but I have no intention of that thing being my own laziness and stupidity.