I once remember I asked my doctor in hospital ‘Is it necessary to have such a high dose of 100mgs, could we reduce it perhaps?’ Because you hear about these medicines having these disastrous effects sometimes; and he agreed and I was kept for a long time, many years, on 50mgs of Atenalol. I was never really aware of high blood pressure.

I got an additional medicine, that was 2.5 to start with then after a fortnight I was told to come back for a check-up. My blood pressure continued on 190 level, the lower one I think was on 87 or something, so doctor prescribed 5mgs and on the second visit it was 160 or 158 I think, so that was obviously an improvement.

I thought that exercising was one of the ways out of this problem – to improve how to exist physically and spiritually. Unfortunately all my exercise is confided to long walks or doing the housework. Walking upstairs about 10 or Beta Blockers times a day, I think that is a very good exercise; going up to the toilet for instance which is up in the bathroom, so that means from downstairs I have to go up whenever I need to. I do no sports because I think at my age now, 72, it’s not really easy to think of any sport. Theres one thing I might add here I suppose, I used to be a very keen cyclist, cycling was really the main sport in my life. I used to play tennis as well but cycling was something that I think really kept me going wonderfully. The moment I sold my bicycle and bought myself a scooter I think trouble started running; to start putting on weight which I didn’t when I was doing my normal routine cycling.

The only thing that was purely automatic thing was taking these pills every day’ Atenalol and Bendrofluazide, I think they’re mainly prescribed for this condition. I just took the pills and never worried about it.

Our good friends, husband and wife are both pharmacists. That’s perhaps why the interest in medicine comes in because we sometimes we talk about the medicines and obviously they are another sort of source of information about medicines. The wife has got high blood pressure and I think shes got it much higher than I have, around 200. But also she says that she only sometimes has very high blood pressure, there are times when she has got it down to normal. Maybe that’s some sort of consolation for me; that I’m not the exception, it’s a universal thing that it goes up and down, some people have it more, some have it less and people still exist.

Well it got, over these years it used to be average 150/85 something like that, it was always more or less of that figure, it was never above 160 or anything like that. And because of this continued, because I had it checked occasionally apart from the once yearly annual visits to hospital I had it checked by my GP about once every 3 months or so so always seemed to maintain that level you know, slightly above but under control you know it were, never dangerous apparently above normal.

I thought about buying myself one of these contraptions you know they’re marvellous now, electronically operated, all you do is just put it on your wrist and you get a, the higher and lower levels and a pulse as well and checking 3 times a day and in fact making a chart, a list.

Comparatively recently, the last couple of years maybe, I started taking an interest in medicines and what they do. I read every leaflet there is, I usually have these leaflets in packets with medicine. I’ve also got a little book about medicines so every time I had a new medicine prescribed I’d check it up in my little book; what are the side effects, warnings, anything like that. All these medical programmes on television, I love watching these programmes. They increase my interest in the matters of medicine – I don’t think it’s anything to do with fear. I really do read the warnings, but I don’t quite believe that they affect me. From experience I find that whateverwarnings are given, they don’t seem to affect me; nausea, headaches or any of these different symptoms that may appear according to these warnings.

Strangely enough even though we talk about high blood pressure I never thought about it. I had sometimes a slight pain in the back of my head. Somebody told me, perhaps one of the doctors, that it might be one of the symptoms of high blood pressure when you get this pain. I think it seems to be true in a sense – I notice that whenever I’m a bit more excited or there are situations that my blood pressure probably goes up, I get a pain in the back.

I am very emotional that’s true, I am easily stressed and I tend to worry. I tend to worry about nothing – that’s my composition, my physical and emotional status – I get very easily upset. Very silly things upset me, maybe it is something to do with high blood pressure. Theres one thing I must here mention; that all my worries, all my excitements and negative symptoms in that sense are very short lasting. Maybe it’s important, maybe not, but I never really loose a night’s sleep because of a worry. I would be worried that somebody is passing while I sleep – I have to get up and say ‘Who is this?’, but in a matter of a second I’m alright, no problem. So maybe that’s why my sons say to me, ‘Why haven’t you got any white hair?. Because I’m very peaceful inside.

Well, it started about 30 years ago I suppose. When I tried to apply for a life insurance they had to do the medical check-up and that’s when they discovered that I have high blood pressure.I forget what it was but obviously it was above normal. I was physically quite well and it was rather a surprise to find that when I applied for insurance they didn’t want to give it to me.