The woman who rents a room from me, who has absolutely no history of hypertension whatsoever, is suddenly experiencing high blood pressure. She found out about it a few days ago when she went to her doctor because she was feeling abnormal fatigue. Her BP was in the hypertensive range, but it wasn’t ballistic. Her doctor said this was the cause of her fatigue. Now she just told me five minutes ago that it’s 210/90. I suggested she go to urgent care ASAP. She’s like “no, I gotta get to work now.” Is she going to blow a gasket tonight, or can she exist as a walking time bomb for a prolonged and indefinite period of time before she pops her cork?
IANAD, just a person who has been in a similar situation. It’s not the absolute numbers, it’s whether the hypertension is causing damage to her organs. If she has headaches, confusion, drowsiness, difficulty breathing, chest pain, vision problems or other indications that something is severely wrong, she should seek help immediately. She definitely needs to see a doctor and make sure that her blood pressure is properly controlled.
I had BP of 145/175 with severe headaches, and wasn’t able to reach my doctor. I was later told that I should have gone to the emergency room, and that I could have had a stroke, but I survived and saw a doctor a few days later. It took a while, and trying a lot of different medications, but I was able to get my pressure under control and have not had any issues since.
Hypertension Urgency, look it up.
I’d never had a high blood pressure reading, in my whole life. Last Easter I spent 5 days on the cardiac ward while they got it under control. I was admitted with a BP of 208/135 !
It is a medical emergency. I was triaged into a busy emergency room, ahead of a guy who was bleeding from a horrible head wound! I was sent to emerg directly from my Dr’s office!
I did not stroke out or suffer life altering organ damage. I was extremely lucky, I was told this repeatedly. What I did come away with was similar to a really bad concussion. I was 5wks on my couch, holding my head, recovering. It was really, really uncomfortable. Standing or moving made me nauseous, i could not think straight it was really awful, and a slow tedious recovery. I lleft hospital taking the maximum Tylenol dose, daily and morphine for break through pain.
If it’s not treated and stabilized it will continue to shoot up to a very dangerous range and then plummet to an equally dangerously low range. It continues, soaring higher and dropping lower. That’s a sure recipe to stroke out.
Show her this thread, urge her to go to a hospital!
Yeah, that’s why she’s not freaking out about it. (Well, she’s freaking a little.) She has none of those things, all of which she also listed (she’s an LVN). She’s convinced that she can wait until Tuesday—her earliest day off.
One or the other.
Even though the latter eventuality is more likely, I wouldn’t be delaying appropriate medical attention to attend to whatever is causing this sudden blood pressure spike (kidney disease, a hormonal problem or drug effect are among the possibilities).