follow-up

A follow-up on Neighbor 8's Aunt:

In the hospital Neighbor 8’s aunt sat beside two other elderly patients. One was having difficulty in breathing and was being nebulized. The other one had a heart condition.

At this point Neighbor 8’s Aunt was getting more anxious then ever, fearing that her condition would get as worse as the person she was sitting next to. She was eventually accommodated a little after two in the morning. By that time her blood pressure had risen to 220/100 mmHg. She was given a nitrate sublingually to effect vasodilation. Blood pressure monitoring showed that the sublingual drug was not enough and she was given another calcium channel blocker in. Her BP was continuously monitored until her systolic BP went down to 160 mmHg.

It was already past 4 in the morning when she was sent home. She was advised to continue her medication and avoid eating fatty and salty food.

I had an hour-long conversation with her earlier and on hindsight she kept insisting that she was really afraid of the sudden increase in blood pressure. She had been around too many sick relatives to take health matters lightly. As well she should, I thought, as she ticked off a litany of heredofamilial diseases in her family.

But all is well now. She is going off to the market to buy bananas. And I have a box of Danish cookies to show for my efforts.


[Tell me if I shouldn’t be writing about this. Seriously, please do.]