Mum’s story of hypertension
I will be telling the story of my mom- her struggle with hypertension. It’s commonly referred to as high blood pressure, and hereinafter, I’ll refer to it as “HBP”. She is fifty nine years old. I cannot tell exactly when it started; I was young. But probably it started during one of those periods when she used to complain of frequent headaches.
Ever since the diagnosis was made, she has been on medication for nearly eight years now. Her diagnosis was a first, none in our extended family had previously suffered from hypertension. We have since established that her HBP was attributable to her being overweight and also due to stress. I’ll talk about the stress for a minute. We are a family of six siblings. Bringing up a family of six is not easy. At the time she was also juggling with work.
We did not know how to handle the situation. However, we had to make a lot of changes like not being stubborn ‘kids’; you don’t want to be stressing mom. In the recent past, we have learnt to manage her condition through dietary approach. We prepare her meals with minimal salt and she does not take coffee and tea anymore.We also allow her to have lots of bed rest when she gets home after work.
My mom’s grandson is her ‘healer’ (I mean like that of, “time is the best healer”). He is nine years old. They play a lot and have mom sweat it all out. Occasionally, they watch cartoon together, mom is suddenly carried to a world that is easy and tranquil, and for a moment, she forgets about all her troubles. On other occasions, they sit around the fireplace and she tells stories to him. It has not been easy on her; routine checkups and medication are expensive, and the hassle of having to take medication every other day is real! HBP might not have gone away, but we have the ‘best healer’.