The pressure's off for now

I have high blood pressure. Go figure.

When I found out about it seven years ago, my first question was how on earth could I have a condition like that? After all it's not like I have any stress in my life.

I work in advertising. It doesn't get more stable than that.

And thank God I don't have teenage and almost teenage kids.

Oh, wait a second.

Then there's that little inescapable-no-matter-how-hard-I-try fact: hypertension is one of the things my mom died from. So I take it seriously.

I've taken Diovan 160 for almost 7 years. It's my personal miracle drug. It's controlled my blood pressure beyond reason, keeping it at a chart-perfect 120/80 virtually regardless of what kind of stress I've been under.

Father's little helper.

But a funny thing happened yesterday. My blood pressure shot up to 145/90, just outside the high end of normal (by the way, The High End of Normal was the title of my first album. I think it's still available on Amazon).

If you know anything about me, you know that my body is a finely tuned precision machine. For years I've been finely tuning it with In-N-Out burgers and sugar-filled Coke from Mexico. And you can always tell when a finely tuned machine isn't running right.

Yesterday morning when I got up, I knew immediately something was wrong. I was anxious, clammy, out of sorts. When I stood up my heart was beating like the opening drums in Hawaii Five O.

Well, I saw my doctor today. He checked me out, gave me an EKG and said everything looked fine. At 136/84, my blood pressure was a little higher than normal and a little lower than yesterday.

What he decided to do was take me off Diovan 160, and put me on Diovan HCT 160/25.

The difference is the new pill is actually two medicines: one controls my blood pressure, and the other is a diuretic. What will a diuretic do you say? For starters, it'll make me pee like Seabiscuit about 100 times a day while it gets rid of the salt and extra water in my body that's increasing my blood pressure.

So I'll start taking it tomorrow and see how it goes. Then I'll check back with my doctor in a couple weeks.

In the meantime, my blood pressure will be under control.

And I'll be sitting very close to the door.