So let’s look now at some of the treatments that doctors recommend to patients for high blood pressure because these are important. These are treatments that you have to be comfortable with taking for the rest of your life and that’s a very vital point here because if they’re causing you side effects then we have to address those and keep changing the medication until a) it works at reducing your blood pressure and b) you are perfectly happy to take it as part of your daily routine indefinitely.

There are many classes of drugs which lower blood pressure and fortunately we can usually find among them treatments which are successful and side effect free for most people. I won’t go through them in detail but I think by the same token as it’s important that they work it’s also important for you if you are taking blood pressure medication to be aware that these effects can exist and to mention them to your doctor. For instance, one of the drug classes that’s widely used for blood pressure and actually has an excellent reputation for reducing the risk of stroke in particular is a weak water tablet usually the one called bendroflumathiazide. Now that can cause sexual difficulties in men and most men don’t like coming to doctors anyway, coming along every six months to have their blood pressure taken, they may well not want to mention to the doctor that they are having difficulties in sustaining an erection, for instance. But if you are experiencing those difficulties there’s absolutely no reason for you to suffer in silence. Your doctor may forget to ask you but do volunteer these effects which can include headache, for instance. You may put down your headache to high blood pressure but headache actually doesn’t usually co-exist with high blood pressure. it’s much more commonly an effect of some of the drug classes used to treat high blood pressure. Similarly tiredness, well we all feel tired some of the time but if you feel tired most of the time then it could possibly be an effect of one of the blood pressure medications that you’re taking. So by all means raise these not necessarily waiting for your next blood pressure appointment but if you have any suspicion that that may be the case.

Most blood pressure tablets have the effect initially of making you feel slightly giddy on getting up quickly, for instance. That may wear off but if things like that persist then please do let your doctor know.

The first lot of tablets he gave me first of all made my left leg paralysed – literally – it was completely in pain. The second lots of tablets he gave me dried the throat completely, I could almost not breathe. And the third lot we tried, they seemed to work quite satisfactory.

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.

However one very interesting thing is that the new set of tablets that I am on don’t have this effect on the sort of Droop factor of being impotent. And it shows to me again that actually playing around with ones tablets, so one doesn’t have the ones that one doesn’t want is well worth while.

I had a problem because certain tablets gave me a rash and other ones made me feel rough. I had Vendorflorizide and then I had something else to go with it, but I even can’t remember that. I’m a very down to earth person and I took it that what they were giving me was right and it must have settled it down- until it went up again and, and they had to change the medication.

Theres always a chance that there may be problems with tablets, like there always has been. That has gone through my mind, but on the other hand I don’t know if I could cope without them because of this feeling I get in my chest, like when I did once walk up the road and hadn’t taken them. I don’t think I could cope without them.

It was the registrar who changed me from beta-blockers to ACE inhibitors when I went for my hospital check and tests. The GP didn’t explain why he was doing this, but he had said that I might well be put onto a different drug – the reason that the ECG was showing a few blips might be because of hardening of the arteries – and that I might need a medication that would cause the arteries to relax. From information I was given I knew that it was the ACE inhibitor that did that job.

He experimented with various substitutes and various tablets. I let them get on with it – they’ve got plenty to do without me bleating. They know what they are doing, I haven’t a clue – they could tell me and I wouldn’t understand it. I would say there is no point in them wasting their time. Just put your trust in them and let them get on with it. Because of complications I couldn’t have beta-blocker. I am COPD, I have had asthma since childhood so they are contra-indicated, and they tried various ACE inhibitors, some of which didn’t suit me. But eventually we found out that Diltiazide and I are quite a good match.

I take it the morning and about 6 oclock in the evening. There is a reason I don’t take it later, because it is a diuretic as well as a blood pressure sorter outer, if you take it just before you go to bed, you are waking every ten minutes having to trot of to go to the loo.

WifeThe new one is Anapril malleate and also I am also on one Atenolol a day plus the bendrofluazide. But before that I was taking two Adalats and the Atenolol and the bendrofluazide. The doctor decided to change to one of the new pill. Really I think shes changed it from time to time when she feels that perhaps my system has got used to one particular medication.

The first drug that I was actually prescribed was Atenalol. The doctor said ‘Come back to see me in a few weeks or so’, and I think it was probably a month and I went back to see him. Then he said ‘Oh I’ll add something to it’, because it was about the same reading; I’m not quite sure what the reading was but it was the same reading and it hadn’t come down that much. So then he gave me, I think – I hope that the word is correct – Bendrofluazide, something like that. I had 5mls of that along with the Atenalol, and I was told of side effects – probably a bit of itchy throat and burning eyes or something very similar. So I took that and I was on that for about 2 years.

Then my pressure went up again, and I went to the hospital and saw a consultant there. He took me off the Atenalol and put me on Istin. and it’s doing a great job for me. It did cross my mind once, the fact that you are on a tablet for 2 years or 3 months but your system would have come immune to that and then whether or not you should change that tablet for something else. But then I wondered if that is the case, then you’re prescribing a tablet that might be working for you and to change to something else might not. Your body is obviously not accustomed to that and it takes a bit of settling time. So, I’m not really concerned too much about taking the ones that I’m taking now – I wouldn’t like to be changed without cause. If someone says to me ‘Yes I think that, this has done you well but it’s time to move onto something else, I’ll probably question that ‘Why move on, why not take the one I’m taking because this is working for me?’ But I know that the answer to that probably is yes, as one tablet is probably as good as the other.

I think I’m now old enough to know that it is up to me, I can say what treatment I want. I think there are diuretics they try, then something called beta blockers. I haven’t looked into these because I’m not even prepared to think about them yet. But I suppose because it’s not life threatening yet, I feel I can make my own decisions at the moment. They’re quite happy, they respect that and I feel they haven’t made me at all uneasy about the fact that I’m trying alternative treatment, they’ve been very good about that.

Twice now I’ve stopped taking blood pressure tablets and then in a sense been forced back into them by family, because I have a young child – a teenage child. And I was in a sense black-mailed back onto taking these tablets by friends – close friends who said ‘Oh no you must be more responsible. ‘Oh you know you have a child to bring up. Think about it, you know the pills aren’t that bad. But I have got this total gut feeling that as I am 51 and my heart’s OK at the moment, and if I lose more weight, and lead a healthy life, which I do on the whole- can I manage without them? I’ve tried to talk to the specialist, last week actually, when I went to have a final check. He basically said ‘If you had angina and you were in total pain all the time and your body went green you would take any old tablets, but because you don’t get any symptoms you feel you don’t need to take these. And this isn’t a good idea, my dear. So it wasn’t really very helpful to me I didn’t think.

I now come to the conclusion, that while I think they are well intentioned, I think the total attitude in this country towards diabetes and hypertension is in the dark ages. Doctors have not told me direct to my face what the problems are, nor told me what the consequences of my actions-or lack of action- are going to result in. No doctor except my own GP has turned round to me and said, ‘Well look you know you are heading for the pine box if you don’t do something about this. They don’t; they just turn round and say, ‘We will increase this tablet and take some aspro and see you in six months time.

Today I am now on three different tablets for the hypertension’ Analapril, Innovaseand Tenormin, and Aspirin daily. Now my blood pressure even with all those tablets is 180130. So I am now what is called a severe hypertensive. I have now contacted a clinical foundation in America and ascertained the facts. They have now asked for all my notes from the National Neurological hospital; all my x-rays, MRI scans, CT scans. They will give me a second opinion and, if necessary, invite me to the US to have a shunt in my brain. It’s called an epigastric shuntwhich will relieve the fluid on the brain. There are disadvantages to it, but they think on the basis of it, the reason for my hypertension in the first place was nothing to do with my heart or my arteries but was due to the tumour that was in my brain and causing the blockage.