#sometimes i play pathologic to relax because it's a pain machine but at least it's voluntary you know. i signed up for it and im seated

[katabay]

(cage the elephant voice) money don't grow on trees, I got bills to pay, etc etc etc

ngl this month has been Rough™: for whatever reason, I've been going back to Thief for something familiar. which is. well. it's definitely not the same as relaxing, I have never felt relaxed playing the original Thief games lmao but it is familiar! I wrote an outline for a longer fan comic set after Deadly Shadows using themes/etc I enjoyed from the 2014 reboot but I got sidetracked reading up on the gnarlier politics involved in the Industrial Revolution. so. we'll see what happens with that!

[macgyvermedical]

Do you have any suggestions for people with medical trauma for getting an accurate blood pressure reading? This is an issue for me and I’ve heard the same thing from others with similar histories.

Automatic blood pressure cuffs in particular give me problems, mostly because they sometimes get super painful (using a large cuff sometimes helps but it’s hard to get people to agree to use it) and while I’m slightly less likely to freak out and get a super high reading at home, the readings can still vary wildly from one to the next. I follow all of the instructions on the handouts my doctors and pharmacists give me, which is really the only advice they give, except they usually say to sit quietly and don’t look at or read or listen to anything for five minutes before/during taking it, but I find my blood pressure can often go from 140s/90s to 110s/70s just by playing a little game on my phone.

I’m worried about hypertension (I had severe hypertension after getting COVID the first time and I recently caught it again) but how am I supposed to know if that’s a concern when I don’t know what readings are accurate? Is there anything specific I could ask for that might help?

This is a tough one. I myself have had and continue to have severe problems with getting my blood pressure taken, especially on automatic machines.

First, you can always ask for a manual reading. Changing the cuff size unfortunately can change the reading by up to 20 points, making it a lot less useful.

For me what has helped is knowing everything I can about blood pressure readings. Here is some of that info:

Single office blood pressure readings are almost never done correctly and as such are HIGHLY inaccurate. Like, they can say if you probably need to go to an emergency department because your BP is 200/110, but other than that they are pretty inaccurate screening tools.

To get a usable blood pressure reading to diagnose hypertension, you have to be sitting in a chair with your feet and back supported, your arm at heart level, your abdomen relaxed, and your mind as blank as it can be for 5 minutes. The cuff also has to be the correct size.

Ideally, you are taking this standardized reading 2-3 times over 1-4 weeks.

Any deviation from this can mean a reading that is higher or lower by up to 20 points.

White coat hypertension (hypertension in the doctor's office but not necessarily elsewhere) is super common and considered "intermediate risk" because it indicates that your brain is capable of increasing your blood pressure into pathological ranges even if you don't have a cardiovascular reason for it. That means that you are likely having BP spikes outside of the doctor's office, they're just not indicative of sustained high blood pressure. This is still something a doctor needs to know about, and distracting oneself can obscure this (if you're feeling the same adrenaline release during other activities as you feel when you get your blood pressure taken, it might be time to discuss screening for an anxiety disorder).

One of the best ways to determine sustained hypertension in people with white coat hypertension is to have them wear a monitor for 24 hours- or at the very least take out of office blood pressure readings and record them to bring into the doctor's office. This wearing the monitor might be tough at first, but it also might help de-sensitize you to the automatic cuff, which will then help decrease the number of high readings you get.