Costly Inheritance
Heredity tends to catch up with one. No matter how long you can stave it off, eventually it shows up and says, "I'm here!" It has now caught up with me.
I seem to have inherited more from my mother than from my father. I've inherited her sense of humor, her weight, and, now, her high blood pressure. She had had it for many years when I was a child, only we never knew until the summer I was ten, and she fifty-one. I still remember the day, a Saturday. My father had gone to work on an extra job, and we were at home, waiting to go shopping when he returned later in the afternoon. My mother was talking on the phone with someone we knew well, and she was getting upset. The person on the other end was apparently telling her her version of what others had said about my mother and us. The person was a gossip monger who like to twist things. My mother was almost crying when she hung up the phone.
Right after that, she lay on my bed, in my room next to the hallway where the phone was. She was trembling, and she said she felt pins and needles in her right arm and leg. She asked me to rub them with caña, a liquor distilled from the leftoves of making wine. We had come here on vacation the summer before and still had a couple of bottles in the house. The pungent smell of alcohol filled the room as I passed my hands over her arm and leg. She was still lying down when my father came home. She explained what had happened, but claimed she could go do the shopping.
At the supermarket, she pushed the cart with her left hand, and had her purse in her right hand. I remember it. It was a stiff, shiny black, like patent leather, with gold bars along the top edge where it snapped shut, and a shiny black handle. It would fall from her hand often, and she would drag her foot a bit as we walked around the aisles. The right corner of her mouth was twisted downwards, and she wasn't talking normally. After we left the shopping at home, my father convinced her to go to the hospital and check to see why part of her body felt numb. We did, and it turned out she had suffered a stroke. The doctor said her blood pressure must have been very high for years. The good thing was that she made a full recovery.
Because of that history, I have been trying to eat with less salt, and checking my blood pressure with some regularity. While it was stretching the higher limits, it has always been within bounds. Until now. A couple of weeks ago, I was getting a headache almost every day at unusual times. Normally, my headaches come with my period, or if I'm out in excessive heat or sun. But this wasn't the case. So, I checked, and my blood pressure had left normal bounds. I went to the doctor, and he gave me a little pill to take every day from now on. He also told me to avoid salt as much as possible. It's official, I've joined the rank of high blood pressure sufferers and come into my inheritance.
Change of routine for me. Every day I continue to walk for at least twenty minutes. When winter comes, though, it won't be so simple. I'm trying to eat more fruit, though I'm allergic to much of it. I pass on the salt cellar, but can't give it up completely. There's too much good food out there that needs a couple grains of salt, at least. What I have to eschew, however, is a lot of the junk food that I occasionally indulged in. Potato chips of all kinds, salted nuts, olives, pickles, sausages, cured ham (!), and cheeses cannot be indulged in with previous abandon. At the most, a couple of potato chips, one pickle, or a slice of ham. While I eat at least lunch with my husband, I am using even less salt in that meal. Dinner has always been an individual effort in our home, and now mine is as salt-free as possible.
We all inherit something from our parents. I only wish I could have inherited a million dollars instead of high blood pressure. Now that would have been an inheritance I would have celebrated!
I seem to have inherited more from my mother than from my father. I've inherited her sense of humor, her weight, and, now, her high blood pressure. She had had it for many years when I was a child, only we never knew until the summer I was ten, and she fifty-one. I still remember the day, a Saturday. My father had gone to work on an extra job, and we were at home, waiting to go shopping when he returned later in the afternoon. My mother was talking on the phone with someone we knew well, and she was getting upset. The person on the other end was apparently telling her her version of what others had said about my mother and us. The person was a gossip monger who like to twist things. My mother was almost crying when she hung up the phone.
Right after that, she lay on my bed, in my room next to the hallway where the phone was. She was trembling, and she said she felt pins and needles in her right arm and leg. She asked me to rub them with caña, a liquor distilled from the leftoves of making wine. We had come here on vacation the summer before and still had a couple of bottles in the house. The pungent smell of alcohol filled the room as I passed my hands over her arm and leg. She was still lying down when my father came home. She explained what had happened, but claimed she could go do the shopping.
At the supermarket, she pushed the cart with her left hand, and had her purse in her right hand. I remember it. It was a stiff, shiny black, like patent leather, with gold bars along the top edge where it snapped shut, and a shiny black handle. It would fall from her hand often, and she would drag her foot a bit as we walked around the aisles. The right corner of her mouth was twisted downwards, and she wasn't talking normally. After we left the shopping at home, my father convinced her to go to the hospital and check to see why part of her body felt numb. We did, and it turned out she had suffered a stroke. The doctor said her blood pressure must have been very high for years. The good thing was that she made a full recovery.
Because of that history, I have been trying to eat with less salt, and checking my blood pressure with some regularity. While it was stretching the higher limits, it has always been within bounds. Until now. A couple of weeks ago, I was getting a headache almost every day at unusual times. Normally, my headaches come with my period, or if I'm out in excessive heat or sun. But this wasn't the case. So, I checked, and my blood pressure had left normal bounds. I went to the doctor, and he gave me a little pill to take every day from now on. He also told me to avoid salt as much as possible. It's official, I've joined the rank of high blood pressure sufferers and come into my inheritance.
Change of routine for me. Every day I continue to walk for at least twenty minutes. When winter comes, though, it won't be so simple. I'm trying to eat more fruit, though I'm allergic to much of it. I pass on the salt cellar, but can't give it up completely. There's too much good food out there that needs a couple grains of salt, at least. What I have to eschew, however, is a lot of the junk food that I occasionally indulged in. Potato chips of all kinds, salted nuts, olives, pickles, sausages, cured ham (!), and cheeses cannot be indulged in with previous abandon. At the most, a couple of potato chips, one pickle, or a slice of ham. While I eat at least lunch with my husband, I am using even less salt in that meal. Dinner has always been an individual effort in our home, and now mine is as salt-free as possible.
We all inherit something from our parents. I only wish I could have inherited a million dollars instead of high blood pressure. Now that would have been an inheritance I would have celebrated!
I have had high blood pressure for years make that decades(except when undergoing chemo and not a recommended way to treat high BP). My Swiss medicine Blopress keeps it under control. High potasium foods supposedly help such as bananas and melons. My father suffered from the same thing.
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