Somehow, one of the things I haven't mentioned between my "I'm Diabetic" and "My Health Journey" posts are the frustrations that have come with the use of medical technology. As tools used by some of our most respected professionals to determine highly sensitive information, you would think they would be reliable, but this is not always the case.
After I received my adult ADHD diagnosis and before my home blood pressure monitor was delivered, I decided out of curiosity to test my blood pressure with one of the publicly available cuffs at my local Shoppers Drug Mart. My results were very elevated.
Later, I received my home monitor and my results weren't fantastic, but in a far less alarming range than what I'd got at Shoppers. In fact, I was in an allowable range to begin the stimulant medication for ADHD. I was uncomfortable because I didn't know if I should trust the home monitor over the Shoppers one, but after some encouragement, I decided to try the meds.
I'd been monitoring myself at home for awhile, and my blood pressure hadn't changed significantly. In fact, it was better than before I started the meds. Out of curiosity, I decided to go back to Shoppers to test my blood pressure, to see if my results had improved by their machines standards as well.
My results were far, far worse than anything I'd seen before. I asked the person at the pharmacy if their monitor was reliable, and he said it was "typically reliable", but told me the temperature that day and the fact that I'd been walking could have elevated my numbers, and encouraged me to keep monitoring from home.
The next day I went to work, brought my monitor with me, tested myself and it said that I had an "irregular heartbeat" which was something I hadn't seen before. I panicked and got my coworker to drive me to the ER.
A nurse did my blood pressure and an ECG. When I saw an ER doctor, he told me that my heart rate was elevated, but that I didn't need to stay for monitoring. I told him that I'd tested my blood pressure and it said I had an irregular heartbeat. He said that my heartbeat was fine, it was just moving fast. I told him that I'd had an extremely high reading from a Shoppers monitor, and he said that those cuffs tend to push numbers up. I gave him my exact numbers and said, "Really, do they push them up THAT much?" and he was like "Yeah, I wouldn't trust that reading. Just keep track with your home monitor."
This was weird to me, because I thought that the Shoppers ones would be more reliable. They're larger and seem like more of a commitment to install, and the monitor at home requires me to fasten the cuff myself, which seems to leave more room for human error.
Later on, after I was reacquainted with my family doctor, I brought in my monitor to be assessed for accuracy. Apparently, the monitor that I'd been sent by the ADHD clinic was for 37 cm arms and lower, while my arms were 42 cm
So not only were the Shoppers cuffs pushing my numbers up, but also, the comparably more favourable home monitor was ALSO pushing my numbers up by being too small.
I was then fitted for a 24 hour cuff. This is pretty much what it sounds like. It's a monitor that is attached to you for 24 hours that you can take home, and it measures you every half hour. The idea is that when you're being tested, some people tense up, causing their blood pressure to increase. This is due to the increasing pressure on their arm, anxiety about their numbers, and the presence of an authority figure. The name of this phenomenon is "White Coat Syndrome", based on the idea that a medical professional, likely wearing a white coat, is causing you anxiety with their presence and it's boosting your numbers.
Apparently you can't get anxious about tension on your arm every half hour, and without a medical professional around and no access to your numbers, the 24 hour cuff is supposed to get a better impression of your baseline blood pressure and heart rate.
So I went through all this. My numbers came back and they were... pretty much ideal. So not only were the Shoppers cuffs pushing my numbers up and the home monitor being too tight, I was ALSO impacted by White Coat Syndrome.
I've got a properly fitted home monitor now, and supposedly it gets roughly accurate results.
It's funny, when I was getting my arms measured, the nurse said "Maybe if you lose some weight your arms will get smaller." Talk about something I've never felt compelled to be insecure about. If there's any part of the male body that is predicted to expand with fitness, I'd expect it to be the biceps.
Another piece of equipment that has caused me grief is my glucose monitors, the freestyle libres. In a previous post, I said that these had judged me favourably, with a 96% rate of being in my target range. Thing is, I'm probably doing even better than that, because most of that outlying 4% is from low glucose events.
When I first started monitoring my blood sugar, I noticed that I would sometimes dip low during the night, and sometimes around 4 pm. I opted to correct this by drinking a glass of milk before bed and after work.
At one point, my sugars were coasting real low so I kept trying to get them back in normal range by sucking on jolly ranchers and eating spoonfuls of maple syrup, but the numbers kept dipping. After about two days of me anxiously eating candy, the monitor died.
I had an appointment with my dietician and told her about this. She said that the machine had likely just malfunctioned, and that with my condition and the medications that I'm taking, I shouldn't be concerned about low blood sugars. I told her that my numbers tend to go low at around 3 am and 4 pm. Turns out, if pressure is put on the monitor, it triggers a low blood sugar event.
It's fixed to my arm. I toss and turn in my sleep and often take a nap after work. The times that I got the low sugar events were when I was laying on the monitor.
No comments:
Post a Comment