How Do High Blood Pressure Symptoms Make You Feel - My Story

Have you ever felt that feeling of impending doom? What I’m talking about is more than the intuitive feeling that something bad is going to happen.

When it happened to me, it truly felt like a dark cloud was looming over my head, yet it was inside me and it was impossible to escape.

It all started back in 2006 innocently enough and led up to that day, October 2, 2009, when a very small incident triggered a domino of stress responses that effectively bowled me over.

You see, from 2006 – 2008 I was watching over the care of my parents who were in a convalescent home in Ohio. I was in Arizona where my son and I live, and traveled back and forth about every 3-6 weeks.

Please don’t get me wrong! I loved doing this for my parents, albeit there were some stressful experiences. Apparently, I didn’t realize how those experiences were affecting my health!

To give an example, while my father was in hospice he had a DNR which basically means if something happened to him, he didn’t want any efforts taken to resuscitate him or keep him alive.

It is Hard to Disagree with a Doctor!

To my surprise, when my father had his stroke and the doctor said his brain no longer functioned, the doctor refused to abide by the DNR. A feeding tube was inserted and treatment continued.

The nurses questioned me about it because they saw the situation the same as I did.

I fought the doctor’s decision.

After a week of daily asking the doctor to comply with the DNR, I asked the doctor if a neurologist agreed with him that my father was brain dead, would he abide by the DNR? 

He agreed, and I took my father to the neurologist the next day by ambulance.

The neurologist took about a minute and said there was no way my father was going to be conscious again. 

The next day, nine days after my father’s stroke, my father’s feeding tube was taken out. He passed away the next day.

That was the worst stress of them all. The others just built on it. In February 2008, my mother passed away. 

After a few more months of taking care of insurance claims and doctor bills, I thought it was over.

Stress Overload!

Much to my astonishment, that day in October 2009 turned out to be both a warning and a turning point in my life.

In the mail, I received another new bill from the convalescent care home where my parents had lived. 

It sent me over the top. I had thought I was done with all the issues. What could they be billing us for now?!

My response to being upset used to be to eat comfort foods. 

That day, my comfort foods were tomato soup piled with shredded cheese and lots of Ritz crackers.

One bowl down; I still felt stressed. I think I’ll have another. I thought it was a healthy meal; obviously, it was not! Add to that some diet soda & dinner.

Finally, My Symptoms of High Blood Pressure

That night when I lay down to sleep and closed my eyes, I saw stars. Not a few – lots of them. Along with the stars, there was popping in my head.

“Oh no!” I thought.  “This doesn’t feel right!” I got up….and felt just a little dizzy. Not yet putting two and two together, I sat down to the computer to look up what could be wrong.

While sitting at the computer, I started feeling even dizzier. “How could I be dizzy while sitting down?” I thought. I was starting to panic.

Adding to those symptoms, I felt nauseous.

Since my 18-year-old son was still awake, I decided to tell him what was going on.

He said, “Call Kim, she’ll know what to do.” Kim is my daughter, and also an RN. She lived about 20 minutes away, and even though it was about 1 a.m. by that time, she came right over.

She took my blood pressure. Being the good nurse that she is, she tried not to show her worry, but the fact that she wanted to keep taking my blood pressure to make sure her equipment was correct told me something was up.

Long story just a bit shorter – my blood pressure kept rising, so she took me to the hospital where their measurement said 210/110. 

Other than the panic I felt, the dizziness, and the stars and bumps inside my head only when I lay down, I felt no other symptoms beforehand whatsoever.

(Clue to why you should care about this story. Use my story as your warning if you need to.)

They put me on an IV for a few hours until my blood pressure went down.

Thankfully an EKG said everything in my heart was fine. 

That morning, I went home with orders to see my doctor and was told to change my lifestyle or I would have a stroke within a year.

Another daughter took me to the store to go grocery shopping. She was all about the low-sodium foods.

That was something that I had never even thought about before. To me, it had always been all about watching calories and fats. Things were changing.

That incident was on a Friday night. On Monday morning, I went to the doctor where I was given a prescription for Lisinopril “just in case” I needed it.

I took one pill. The side effects from that pill gave every muscle in my body so much pain that I couldn’t even fathom the thought of taking another pill.

My thoughts were that if I had to live in that much pain from now on, I might as well just have a stroke!

If not medicine, what are the options?

So I thought back to my younger years when I actually had taken the time to take care of myself. 

What did I do? I followed the rules of nutrition to keep my kids healthy.

When my daughter had pneumonia when she was around 4 or 5 years old, the doctor told me there was nothing to do but wait.

I thought, “You wait, but I’m not!”

After a trip to the health food store, my weapon of choice was granulated vitamin c with 1,000 mg per dose.

My daughter had been so sick she couldn’t move off the couch.

Literally two hours after her first dose of vitamin c, she was up and running around all healthy with no more issues afterward.

It astonished even me!

I took that concept and applied it to discovering what I could do for myself.

I Found My Passion!

When I had success (very quickly, I might add) my thoughts went to the fact that I had to share what I knew.

I saw people on support groups that were scared and asking what to do, and I shared what I could.

With 1 in 3 people having high blood pressure and a good percentage not even knowing, I decided to try to make what I knew more available.

Yes, there is lots of info out there. When I was researching it, I would find one answer, which would lead to yet another question. I kept asking about all kinds of scenarios, so I got lots of answers.

Take the steps you need now to take care of yourself.

Believe me; you do not want to get to that point of having that terrifying feeling of doom come over you! I was very, very lucky that I was given that warning.

You might not be so fortunate.

I saw a story online yesterday about a woman who had the same blood pressure I did. She was taken to the hospital unconscious and they weren’t sure what her recovery would be.

Save yourself time and start towards health now

That is why am sharing what I know in my e-book. Because I don’t want anyone to go through what I went through or worse if I can help it.

Whether or not you buy  the ebook, Lower Blood Pressure Fast, take the action steps you need to take care of yourself so you can live a long, healthy life.