Blood pressure wild, GP says reduce pred
Posted , 2 users are following.
Hi, My blood pressure went up to 175/94 and higher, both last night and this morning, but went back to more or less normal but still fluctuating 2 hours after I took my 2 diuretics and accupril. I will see my doctor tomorrow but she wants me to reduce pred from 7.5 back to 5, at least till I see her, and take more lasix today. I also had and still have a headache and increased problems breathing.
But I always have problems breathing due to stable but still problematic bird breeders lung disease (from raising pet chickens, geese, etc), so it doesn't worry me that much. (I no longer raise birds- hence the stability).
I have only been on 7.5 mg pred for about a month and begun on 5 the month before- different from most people. 5 mg helped, but 7.5 mg was really good. Well, she is a good primary doctor so I will do what she says, but I hope she doesn't keep me on 5mg. Temporily I don't mind and it does help somewhat. What would you guys might suggest. Wasn't there something about don't decrease more than 10% at a time? that would be 6,75mg, not 5 . But my pills are 5mg.
0 likes, 11 replies
EileenH noninoni
Posted
I am on pred, I was at about 15mg when my BP was found to be haywire together with atrial fibrillation and high heart rate. No one said reduce pred - they worked around it. Now I am at a lower dose of pred my BP is also lower but I have yet to summon up the enthusiasm to fiddle with the tablets to find somehting better - not off my own bat I hasten to add, but under instructions from the cardiologist.
And frankly, good though your PCP may be, if she's going about it that way I think I might like to see a cardiologist. It is the same as with high blood sugars - there is more than one way to control that besides reducing the pred. Because reducing the pred is just going to bring back the pain and stiffness of the PMR - and that has bad effects too.
linda17563 EileenH
Posted
EileenH linda17563
Posted
If you have ME/fibro then maybe the doctor needs to try other options alongside the pred so you achieve the best result for each problem. Nefret has fibro and PMR, maybe she can suggest a way round this as I know she is on multiple meds.
noninoni
Posted
noninoni
Posted
This is very frustrating- how can I monitor my BP if the machines are so erratic! Well so.....
I am now determined to teach myself how to do it manually on myself. I just want a reliable measure!! And they all say manual is best.
First I ordered a manual BP.
Then I wanted to see if I could hear the beat with the super cheap stethoscope that I own with the machine I had. And yes I could, but the machine heard it at a much earlier than my ears did, explaining why it read too high. Ah ha!
However I could just barely hear it when I did hear it. So I ordered a somewhat more expensive stethoscope which is said to have better sound. My heaing is not as good as it was when I was younger, but I am hoping it will be good enough with a somewhat better stethoscope, the least expensive Littman ($45), not the $400 one.
The story of why I have a cheap $10 stethoscope is sort of funny. Last year when I had bradycardia at the hospital, all these interns kept coming in my room wanting to listen to my heart, which had developed into a 4 beat heart instead of a 2 beat heart. Well, I wanted to hear it too. Why is it so interesting? So I bought the cheap stethoscope and found a youtube site which explains all the heart sounds!! This was useful as it turns out, but rather astonished the doctors that I had found such a thing on youtube! I have wanted a better stethoscope ever since. Anyway, they fixed the 4 beat heart rate with a cardiac ablation by killing the extra pacemaker cells that had developed in my heart in the wrong places. Now I have a nice normal sounding heart that tics along at a good rate, and I am still here, I am glad to say.
EileenH noninoni
Posted
noninoni
Posted
noninoni
Posted
You may wonder if I have a medical background as you do. Well, sort of. I used to do statistics and programming for Parke/Davis and Pfizer for new drug applications, so yes I do, but rather indirectly.
Which reminds me, I just heard from a friend that there is new Pfizer drug for RA called Xeljanz for people for whom methotrexate does not work well. I have heard people on the forum complaining about methotrexate, but largely it seems because they cannot have their evening glass of wine!. That makes me chuckle.
EileenH noninoni
Posted
I had a normal sinus rhythm most of the time - but I still had episodes of rather interesting arrhythmia!
noninoni
Posted
EileenH noninoni
Posted