A bit of a puzzle

Yesterday I was told that I had especially good blood pressure. Like it was 120 over 80. It used to be like that all of the time. I paid no attention to it.

But yesterday I'm thinking, that can't be right. Maybe the thing is broken? Maybe 120 over 80 is the baseline reading and my actual blood pressure is something else entirely?

My blood pressure has been high for about two years, but I don't think that it's been high for the whole two years. I think that it goes up when I have an argument, or when I have to deal with something bad, or when I have to go to see a doctor. Going to the doctor and such used to be no big deal, but now it is very upsetting. So two years ago I was told that my blood pressure was high. And it had never been high before, so they waited a while and took it again. Still, they thought that it might just be some odd thing that would go away. I didn't think anything more about it.

The next year when I saw a doctor who made a big deal out of it and gave me some pills for it. Blood pressure was something I'd never paid attention to before. So I went and found one of those machines at the drug store and took my blood pressure, and it was a bit high, but not as high as she said. I hadn't felt good in a long time, but I just thought it was because of everything that was going on. Then I thought, well, maybe everything that is going on has made my blood pressure go up, and maybe that is what is making me feel bad. So I took the pills for a while, but that didn't make me feel any better.

I quit taking the pills. The blood pressure just seemed to go up whenever I had to go see a doctor. The pills didn't seem to be doing anything, so why take them? And for all I know the pills have side effects that would make me feel worse.

And I didn't go on a diet or do any of the other things that I was supposed to do. The fifteen pounds that I lost came back. A bit of the weight came back between the summer and the Halloween party, and now the rest of it is back. I am now back at pre-tragedy weight. I don't like it, and now that I'm a grown-up gaining weight does not make me feel good, but it didn't make me feel especially bad either. I have other things to worry about.

So I went into the clinic yesterday thinking that they were going to mention high blood pressure and then they would say something about the weight gain. But they didn't say anything about the weight gain. Maybe they thought that last year's number was written down wrong. And since my blood pressure always seems to go up a bit whenever I'm actually having to deal with medical stuff now, I thought that it would be high yesterday, but it wasn't.

120 over 80?

Okay, so what is up with that? You don't have better blood pressure when you gain weight, do you? And I know that chocolate is supposed to be good for your heart or something, and I had some chocolate before I went to the clinic. But the chocolate that is supposed to be good for you is the really dark almost inedible stuff, not the stuff that I usually eat. And certainly the leftover milk chocolate and carmel Easter candy that I was eating yesterday is not supposed to be good for you.

So I just don't get it.