The voice

Everything was going well until the last week when my blood pressure decided to go up. Of course it got alarmingly high on a holiday weekend when my only option would be a trip to the local ER. My last venture through those doors ran up a $5,000 hospital bill, which through the grace of God and possibly assistance from my guardian angel was written off. Doubting this would be likely to happen again I chose to take other measures.

I didn’t ignore the problem, but did everything I could to bring my BP down. I drank plenty of water, rested and tried to stay calm. I had planned to check in at my doctor’s office on Monday morning until I remembered it was a holiday. No!

On Tuesday morning I did follow that plan of action. The reading was still high when the nurse took it, which didn’t surprise me. The doctor came in and we had a chat. He believes that my current medication should be keeping my BP under control so we started looking at the reasons it isn’t.

Looking back at my recent life when it started going up the reason became clear to both of us. It was shortly after I learned from x-rays that I will need a hip replacement. Even though I don’t see this happening until at least next year, I chose to start worrying about it now. To make a long story short, daily hip pain and stress about finances was most likely the culprit.

I reluctantly agreed to try anxiety medication. I was given a prescription for Sertraline and was told it should come under the $4.00 prescriptions that Wal-Mart offers. Wrong! It was $17 for 30 pills. In addition to what I am already taking it would bring my total monthly prescription expense to $25. Like I can really afford that! Thinking I had no choice I paid for it.

When I got home I looked it up online. I was not happy with what I found. First it is a generic version of Zoloft, it takes a month or more to even work because it has to build up in the system. Most disturbing were the list of side effects, almost exactly the same as the ones I had recently dealt with when a Beta Blocker was added to my regular medication. Was I really willing to go through this again?

While I was thinking about that question I opened the package, took out seven tiny pills and actually put them in my pill keeper to start taking today.

That’s when I heard the voice loudly screaming at me DO NOT TAKE THEM! You are not stupid you can stop this cycle of worry without the help of more medication. Enough already!

I collected the seven little pills, put them away and challenged myself to do exactly what the voice of my personal GPS told me to do.