Keeping my blood pressure normal

Will Uber help my blood pressure?

My biannual check-up came up again yesterday, and it is interesting that much as the same things happen, each episode is a story in its own right. First, I needed to ensure my hospital card and medical journal where I record significant milestones were in my pocket and for a 10:00 AM, the job of getting there had to go to Uber.

Much as I gave myself enough time, the Uber driver not only took a circulatory route to the hospital, I was again afraid that by the time I had my blood pressure taken before seeing the consultant, it would be reading at levels brought on by anxiety as in the case of my last two visits. Literally, through the ride, he was chatting on his handsfree phone as I sat beside him, not an activity that prepares you for a high rating.

In any case, I kept calm, arrived with 7 minutes to spare before my scheduled appointment and sat in the waiting area expecting to be called to take a few measurements of my height; as if that would change, my weight; which does change frequently and my blood pressure; which read within the normal scales.

The nurse who tended to me was a slightly older man who I was seeing for the first time, he had made a career transition from a driving instructor to nursing, quite unusual but interesting.

The bloody tales are good

When the consultant called me in, she who had taken over the department from the consultant who retired last year and was involved in some charity work in Myanmar, I reckoned we had not seen each other for about 18 months. When we first met, I had done my research about her, seen most of her recent seminar and conference presentations and determined how she had come about her foreign name.

In her consulting room was a quiet student doctor that I tried to involve and engage in the conversation. I am freely aggregable to having students sit in on my consultations, considering others allowed that for the expertise and treatments I now enjoy.

We started with the pleasantries before reading the runes of my bloods, the tests were done six months before, the counts good, the loads good too, then kidney, liver and cardiovascular functions looking good too. That niggling issue with Vitamin B12 and folic acid deficiency anaemia was still there, improved, but not yet the acceptable region.

All the jokes about how folic acid helps my maternal tissue along with returning to be served by the Bra Advisor at Marks and Spencer’s seemed to flow in the conversation to initial confusion and consequent laughter. We scheduled in a facility to get my full results electronically and apart from doing the blood yesterday, I also got the kit for bloods for my next appointment.

Besides that, there were questions about my love life and sex life, the former is non-existent whilst I search for someone and the latter, we all have needs.

A change of pills after 8 years is possible

During that discussion, we reviewed the situation with my HAND test which I had last year and the possibility that the drug regimen I have been on since May 2010 might have some contributory factors. New drugs also have become mainstream and there was a need to begin to consider switching to the newer drug therapies.

Whilst I have resisted the switch to generics, I was willing to review the options if provided with the information. I was given three options to research and we would select a course in three months’ time.

I was 12^th in the queue at the phlebotomists’ when on going in, I was told the computers were down and that I needed to return to the clinic to get a printout of the bloods to be taken.

More to the vials and the colours

It was there that I learnt from the nurse who tended to me earlier that the colour coding on the blood vials was pertaining to the kinds of additives or reagents that were added to the blood for testing purposes.

Certain reagents clotted the blood, others thinned it, then colouration and other reactions with the blood helped in the test selection for each sample of blood taken along with the timeframe within which the blood must be tested. If you need to know, I have provided a few links for you to review. [Geeky Medics – Blood Bottles Guide] [KCH Vacuette® Selection Chart – PDF] [UHB – Clinical Microbiology Tests]

In some ways. I am surprised that I was never that curious about what those colour codings meant, I was more concerned about the number of vials being drawn to sate the thirst of the vampires’ convention.

I returned to have my blood taken, picked up my 3-month prescription and that was my appointment done until I get an email for my results and possibly a letter from my General Practitioner (GP), that is what we call family doctors here to visit for a booster injection for Vitamin B12.

Thought Picnic: Gentlemanly conduct still matters all the time

The setting in which we find ourselves

On the sacking of Rex Tillerson as the US Secretary of State by President Donald Trump, I can reflect on an episode in my own life just a year ago. I was into my fourth year at the same organisation, where after a stint of two years I was invited back to work on another project.

When I was leaving the first time in 2016, every manager I had worked for and there were 4 by then, one on the verge of leaving the firm had the courtesy to meet with or call me, even from South Africa to thank me for the work I had done.

When I was invited back, I acquired other managers, intermediary and direct who I worked well with until a reorganisation led to my having a new manager instituted over me. For some reason or another, apart from the introductions, we never got on to a smooth start.

It was not working for me at all

For the six months that I worked for him, he did not appear to have any confidence in any I did, I was constantly asked if I knew what I was doing rather than being given the support, encouragement and backing to do the sometimes critical jobs I needed to do.

On many occasions, I was not accorded the formality or structure of understanding the direction in which he wanted to lead the team, rather, my roles, responsibilities and work activity were changed without notice, without communication and frequently learnt about through third parties.

My workplace in the space of half a year became a place of disillusionment and unhappiness as every attempt to engage my manager yielded no appreciable result. Then, one Thursday morning, it came to a head where after undercutting my influence in a change that was primarily under my control, I had literally been reduced from designing systems to shifting boxes.

In the 29^th year of my working in IT in various levels of expertise and reporting to middle and top-tier personnel, the conversation in conference came down to macho talk as to whether I was going to do what I had been instructed to do or not. That for me was the very last straw that broke the back of the camel burdened with indignity and disrespect. I handed in my phone and badge and walked out of that job. I was done.

I handed in a formal notice the next day explaining the reasons for my leaving and received no acknowledgement nor compliment, I had become a nobody to him.

Maybe some of us are too old-fashioned for modernity

There are many things I have encountered in my working life and what least impresses me of everything kind of attitude is the occasional lack of courtesy and disrespect that some people in management seem to have a natural expression of their personality that they have apparently never learnt is bad or just think is normal.

As someone brought up in a somewhat old-fashioned style of comportment, decorum and formality, in address, dress, communication and interaction, it does affect me, if those graces are absent.

It is such a grace that was absent from the way in which Donald Trump dispensed of Rex Tillerson by the deployment of a tweet. Rex Tillerson was once the head of the world’s largest publicly traded oil company.

Gentlemanly conduct still matters all the time

The very least Donald Trump should have done if he ever were a gentleman, which in my mind he never was despite the money he has, the kitschy possessions, the company he keeps and the way he presents, should have been to meet Rex Tillerson face-to-face and inform him of his intention to fire him.

To have done that with a tweet is utterly discourteous and disrespectful to Rex Tillerson, but it says much more about Donald Trump, he is crude, he is not cultured, badly brought and definitely not a gentleman.

You do not sack one of most senior members of your team without meeting them and having a chat to them, but it is sad that these basic elements of courtesy are disappearing from our communication, we are deserting the cultured for the uncouth and accepting that development as the norm. I can’t, I won’t and where such persists, I would neither tolerate nor accept it.

When a man decides I am nobody’s boy

It spoke volumes that when Rex Tillerson gave a final public address to his department, he never once mentioned Donald Trump nor thanked him for the privilege of being asked to serve his country and many noticed.

Rex Tillerson did not need to be the US Secretary of State, he was not being promoted beyond his capabilities that he needed to have fealty and obeisance in deep gratitude to Donald Trump, he was his own man, not a yes man.

There is no doubt that Donald Trump is attracted to two kinds of people working for him, those given positions they are neither competent nor capable of that they just step in not believing their luck for opportunities they never earned and that comes with serious issues, the others are stars and the successful in their professions that he taps in order to be able to brag that he can get the best people to work for him.

These stars or trophies owe Donald Trump nothing and eventually, there would be friction when whatever they do does not feed The Donald’s ego or when disagreement on issues gets taken personally for a president so insecure and constantly found defending himself caught in the warp of an impostor syndrome.

Sometimes, you have to jump first

It could be said that the smarter person would never consider the idea of working for a garrulous, truculent and immature person like Donald Trump, but sometimes a greater call is made of you and you almost begin to believe that you can contribute, for Rex Tillerson, he probably should have walked away a while ago, jumped before he was pushed.

I had that inkling too, for all that I had already done, it was very likely I would have been pushed when my contract came up for renewal in a few months then, I decided, rather than suffer that indignity, I would jump at my own choosing and it was the right decision.

Thought Picnic: Of habits and habitué

The difference is in the same

I cannot help being a creature of habit, much I seek adventure, I have a tendency to get comfortable with people, places, events, things and ideas. I do make the effort to break away from the mundane and the routine, but some things might just remain the same.

Returning to the same places where I went on holiday because the memories are wonderful and the sense of being and feeling was more than palpable if the hotel has been exemplary, it is unlikely that I will consider an alternative, the familiar loses peculiarity and becomes natural. I could say the same for restaurants and much else, I become a habitué.

I do not easily make friends, but the ones I do make, endure for decades, it is just the nature of who I am, I am quiet, reserved, introverted and in some ways conservative, though you won’t see me and think that.

The Left of mind, a right of loss

Then, when I was in Edinburgh, having been away from home for a week, checked out in the morning and went to work before going to the station to board a train back home. It was when I got back home that I realised I might have left two things in my hotel room.

A can of Brut Original Deodorant and a bottle of Hugo Boss Number One Eau de Toilette, the former I have used for almost 30 years, considering it came on the market in the year of my birth and if my memory serves me right, it used to be in my dad’s grooming kit. The latter I have used for nigh on 23 years, I have not been persuaded of any other deodorant or fragrance.

Now, these are no more in the shops, I must order Brut by bulk from Amazon, Hugo Boss, however, is a strange one, the carton says it was made in the UK, but no UK shop stocks the item. Bizarrely, I am only able to get this when I pass through the Charles de Gaulle airport duty-free shop in Paris and it is not getting any cheaper.

Beating myself harder than with a rod

So, you could imagine my sense of loss when a barely used bottle of Hugo Boss was inadvertently left in a hotel room and I had no inkling as to how to retrieve it. Like gloves, I always have at least one spare bottle to hand, but imagine my utter discomfiture when on returning from a trip to London, I could neither find another pair of these fanciful smell repellents.

I searched all bags, high and low, I could not for the life of me think of how I might have lost them again. For weeks, I was resigned to the fact that I had been a second time careless and had relapsed into mental flagellation occasioning regret.

At one time I had decided I would not more travel with them if I could not trust myself to keep them and return with them.

Redemption of self and soul

Then, a few days ago as I was rifling through my new trolley case for my laptops and work materials, I happened upon the zipped-up cavity where I had stored a power bank and there also was the can of Brut and a bottle of Hugo Boss.

I had neither lost nor misplaced them, I just did not remember they were there. I promptly forgave myself, thought about my possibly fading mental acuity and decided, the world is not lost, these things happen. The habit that has been going on for almost a lifetime serves its purpose, though year on year, I have watched the price of Hugo Boss rise by at least 15%, at such prices, one cannot afford to be careless or even carefree.

To each one his own and thankfully Hugo Boss Number One stands out as a class ahead of the rest because celebrity piss water flooded the shelves of perfumeries that if you venture into such shop floors, your departure will be greeted with a vapour trail of pongy effluent that polite company would rather don a gas mask than suggest you reek of the unmentionable.

To retain certain habits, you have to careful, mindful and resourceful, it is the only way to retain a sense of wellbeing and sanity.