White coat syndrome and quiet apes

I went to see Rise of the Planet of the Apes last week with The Boyfriend and The Boyfriend's Daughter.

It was BRILLIANT!

Great story. Great acting. Great company.

Sounds ideal, doesn't it? Well, it wasn't.

Let me tell you why.

Before I moved, I was registered with what can only be described as a bit-of-a-shit-GP. To be fair, it wasn't just one GP, it was about 50 million as there were always locums available rather than the regular practice doctors. It seems that the regular doctors were off playing golf most days. I had nothing against the locums - other than the fact that one could never see the same doctor twice and that many seemed unable to grasp anything other than very basic English.

The last one I saw coughed all over me while looking in my ears. Nice.

Anyway, the 2 or 3 I saw the last 2 or 3 times I went there told me that I might have high blood pressure.

Might?

The readings were on the high side so I was asked to 'come back in a month'. I did. It was high again so was asked to 'come back in 3 months' time'. I did. It was high again...

Then I moved and changed doctors.

I went for the MOT they make you go through when you join a new practice and lo... my blood pressure was high.

The nurse asked me lots of questions and said she thought I may have 'white coat syndrome'. I went on a short waiting list and then, last week, I was 'fitted' with a 24-hour blood pressure cuff.

I must admit, it was the bane of my life for those 24 hours. It was very uncomfortable. It took my blood pressure every 30 minutes until 11pm when it took it every hour until 7am when it went back to every 30 minutes.

I've always found having my blood pressure taken quite painful rather than just uncomfortable and the same thing went for this bloody agonising half hourly measurement.

Every 30 minutes the 'little' battery pack (which was in a bag over my shoulder) would start up, whirring away and then the cuff on my arm would inflate. I'd been told to keep my arm completely still while it was happening or it would fail and have to start again. Unfortunately, when driving, it is often impossible to keep your BLOODY ARM COMPLETELY STILL - so I had several 're-takes' throughout the 24 hours. (And 2 bruises!)

The Boyfriend and I had not given any real thought to the implications of me being in this situation (although WHY THE FECK it hadn't dawned on him how bloody inconvenient it would be I have no idea as he's a nurse!!) so we booked cinema tickets for that night.

You can see where I'm going with this, no?

Oh, yes. Sitting in the cinema, between The Boyfriend and The Boyfriend's Teenage Daughter (so that my stationary, straight arm wouldn't cause anyone else any inconvenience) I was a little apprehensive as the battery pack made quite a noise when it started whirring away.

I just hoped that the film would be suitably noisy.

Mostly, it was.

But there were 2 less noisy moments. Moments where you could have heard a pin drop.

...Or a battery pack whir into life.

TWICE, my companions turned to look at me as if I'd not heard it myself, ensuring that anyone behind us would know that the thunder erupting about my person was, indeed, emanating from row C, seat 12.

I found the whole process very stressful.

Yesterday, I had to go back to find out the results. My new GP is lovely and had a very pleasant trainee with him. I told them about the cinema and they both laughed. Not just a polite little laugh, a real laugh-out-loud bellow. Apparently, most people do very little when they are being monitored.

Most people have the right idea.

My GP leaned across to look at the screen and asked if I'd been at the cinema between 8.15 and 10.15. I had. He showed me the results - the readings between those times were comically skewed across the screen.

Thankfully, all the other readings were completely normal, so it's a happy ending. Turns out I have white coat syndrome. No high blood pressure for me!

The End