Meto.. met.. metopr… metopro-whatever

The cardiologist gave me a prescription for metoprolol yesterday, but I haven’t started taking it yet. I thought about it some more after I left the office, and it doesn’t make sense to me to start taking it right now.

My blood pressure has been a little high both times I visited the office, so he’s concerned about that. He wants me to come back to get an ambulatory blood pressure monitor to wear to see if my blood pressure is just high because I am at a doctor’s office or if it’s normally that high. I don’t have any particular anxiety about going to see a doctor, but we’ll see.

But since this medication will change my blood pressure, why would I want to start taking it before we monitor it? Why would you want to muck with your baseline results? I’m going in for a stress test where I have to run on a treadmill so they can get an EKG after I’ve been active, but this medication is supposed to help reduce the palpitations too. So, again, why mess with results until after all of the testing is done?

My personal opinion is that he wouldn’t mind getting me on medication and leaving me on it as long as it doesn’t have any adverse effects. I’d like to know if my borderline blood pressure is really a problem or if it is just situational. It’s possible that a change in diet and exercise could help things too. He stressed laying off caffeine, so I can start being more diligent about that. I don’t consume that much caffeine anyway since I’m not all that fond of coffee, and I’ve seen what bad things it can do to my mood when I use too much.

My mom suggested that maybe my calm exterior belies the stresses being internalized. That could be partially true, but I don’t think I hide stress that well. There are only a few things that stress me out, and I’ve minimized my daily driving. I can switch to decaf Earl Grey tea in the morning easily enough, but I can’t exactly quit my job or school right now. And I’d rather not medicate something caused by just work. I’d rather figure out how to handle it better in my head. I guess I should have said ‘no’ to drugs, but I hadn’t thought about it long enough. I e-mailed my pharmaceutically inclined brother to solicit his opinion, and he said he’d call me tomorrow night.

We’ll see what happens.