PRESSURE
Today I woke to the rain on the window, feeling the odd splash on my cheeks because I had left it open to feel the breeze as I slept. It was a very bleary eyed Graham that scrambled out of bed to shut it and return to bed to sleep. I really, really, love it when I have the comfy bed and can spread myself on the clean sheets and feel the deep mattress below me; to doze and find dreams that are almost not dreams is just wonderful.
When I woke again and had finished listening to Saturday live on the radio, I got out of bed and measured my blood pressure. This is something I have been getting used to recently. A month? Maybe two months ago I was asked by my medical practice to come in for a physical check up because I have a severe mental illness and people like me are good at dying far too early for our own good; often from preventable causes. A day later the community mental health team invited me for the same tests and for the same reasons. They had been promising this for a number of years but had had to share their tester person between teams and had just got them for their team. I must admit I did groan a bit that two separate parts of the NHS were trying to do exactly the same thing.
I used to get these tests every year. It was policy and practice to do so, but for some reason I think, due to finance and reimbursement, it was stopped. I was disappointed because, in the past, those appointments had picked up on health concerns I was unaware of and I knew that I had been avoiding my GP for ages. The reasons I could probably come up with if I tried but they might be the same ones that meant it took me four years to finally take my bowel cancer tests. Those reasons, they are probably routed in mental illness and in being a man and in being me and really it doesn’t matter too much. It is common knowledge that people like me don’t tend to seek out help for our health, don’t tend to keep appointments and need people to reach out to get us to come along.
I was delighted that the pharmacy person at our practice was asking me in and getting me organised enough to actually make it. In fact, so delighted was I that I admitted that I was also worried about my prostate. (Well worried is maybe a strange word as I often think I am busy dying nowadays.)
I nearly missed my appointment in the end and initially we chose to decide that was the reason for my high blood pressure; that frantic rush to get there on time. But it didn’t disguise the fact that my blood tests showed I had crossed the boundary into diabetes and my drinking had probably been responsible for the liver readings I got.
A week after that, I met my doctor; probably the first time in eight years that I had seen her. I was very, very, apprehensive because the first time I registered with the medical practice, they had said that they would give me two monthly supplies of my medication but also said that if I took constant overdoses they would make it a weekly prescription that I would need to get from them. As the last time I had taken an overdose was thirty years ago I found their assumptions offensive and avoided them as much as I could. That apprehension? It was not needed. This doctor was kind and sympathetic and seemed to understand how easy it is to eat too much and exercise too little and to drink too much when you want to escape from the stress that constantly winds itself into your stomach and muscles. She even made me laugh and admitted to sometimes living unhealthily herself just to rebel against the pressure to conform.
I have been measuring my blood pressure ever since and have watched it change in three weeks from 170 – 96 to around 148 – 90. I hardly eat bread or cheese now, snickers bars are something I don’t even contemplate while, hard boiled eggs, quorn sausages and fruit are my new staple. Wendy says I am already changing shape but just as I doubt that and doubt the readings on my blood pressure monitor; I am beginning to dare to believe that by the time I next see my doctor, who now wants to see me every month; my weight will be subsiding, my breath less laboured when climbing the stairs and the whisky bottle’s cap less frequently twisted off.
I wrote about all this maybe ten years ago when our physical health was, for a time, slightly more the topic of the day than usual. You can see the speech I gave on my website. I go into detail about why it is a human rights issue and maybe if I had the energy would print it off as an answer to those people who think, those of with illnesses like mine, are just being irresponsible when we become overweight and unfit, increasingly unhealthy and even more likely to fit into the statistic of being one of the people who dies around twenty years earlier than most other people do.
I have decided to try to make the effort to try to become healthier, to have at least a fighting chance of being alive when Wendy’s children graduate from university, if that is what they do, or get married, if that is what they do. But it is difficult.
For decades I have been convinced I should really not be alive. I think I am so disgusting that I bring suffering not only to those I love but the whole world and so it is a strange feeling to even contemplate putting effort into remaining alive. I suppose I will just have to live with that contradiction. My life is a mass of contradictions so maybe this is just one more of them! I think I am a devil but am an atheist. I think I am kind and loving but believe I am the opposite. Those sorts of things!
Now having said all of that I will lie back and look out of the now shut window at the two rooks who I think are nesting on our chimney pot! They bring perspective, as does the sky which has grown dark again, as does the sound of Wendy laughing downstairs with the children.
(Photo Otter Ferry July 2023)