Who Decides?

Yesterday I went with a family member to the doctors, he saw the Nurse there, she took his blood pressure, she put the numbers, or clock type thing so he could see them, she slowly squeezed the small black hand pump three times and each time the finger on the clocked face moved forward and then settled to a lower number. I said to her, “You show us the numbers like they will mean something to us, but they mean nothing to us.” Nurse James then said to Marc, “Your blood pressure is 150 over 76,” I said, “Is that good?” Nurse James replied, “It’s a bit high, not dangerously,” Then turning to Marc she said, “You need to cut down on your salt intake,” He told her, “Since my last blood pressure review, I’ve cut out salt altogether as I was told too much salt is bad for my blood pressure.”

I said to Nurse James, “How do you know what is right or wrong?” She said, “It depends on the person’s age and medication they are taking, what time of the day it is and other factors.” I asked Nurse James, “Would you take my blood pressure?” As I was curious if mine would be higher or lower as, Marc and myself are of similar age.

I sat down, she did the same as before and said, “Yours is 138 over 80 again it was gobbledygook to me, so I said, “Is that good or bad?” Nurse James said, “Yours is slightly better than Marc’s,” I felt chuffed. I asked her to write both down, she did. I told her, “You are clever to know all this.

But really the medical people are SO clever to know things like blood pressure and blood types, just to mention two things in our amazing bodies.

We are SO wonderfully put together.