Daily Pills and Shame

At six, I rode my first bike. My ever-so-slightly younger brother was already gliding the pavement without his training-wheels and I was the one left behind. motivated by shame, I vowed to catch-up and allowed my dad to teach me. I learned quick when he let go at the top of a local hill that had just been tar-and-chipped. The immanent fear of danger was a quick and efficient teacher.

At seventeen, I drove my first car. My girlfriend had started college and my friends had figured out I didn't like to pay for gas. Their was no way I was going to get caught riding the bus as a high-school upperclassman. A weeks worth of trips on the same bus as the freshman and having to get up an hour earlier to do it proved to be the breaking point for my reluctance to get a part time job and begin paying for car insurance. Again, shame drove me to take the next step in my life. 
 
As a nurse working on a hospital's chronic heart floor, I see the effects of shame. Older women who are afraid to admit they can no longer cook for themselves and end up sending their sodium and sugar levels through the roof with microwave dinners. Older men who refused to use a walker or a cane until they fell down the stairs and broke their pelvis. No one wants to admit that they may be suffering from the worst parts of getting older, dependance and physical decline. 

Today, the doctor told me what I had already known. My blood pressure is getting too high. Most of the patient's I take care of would be happy to have my numbers, but I know that the sixty-five year old I take care of during the day probably had borderline numbers like me when he was my age. What kept them from taking care of their systolic business in the 1980's? Aside from lack of information, I'm guessing it was shame. Ignorance may be bliss, but the next best thing is a good show for the rest of them. Right? 

I've seen the ravages of heart disease and high blood-pressure. I've seen proud men drown in their own fluids, their lungs filled up past the first lobe. I've seen women stroke out with a systolic pressure above 240, despite headaches, multiple visits to the ER with chest pain, and difficulty breathing. When I have time, I ask them when they started getting mild symptoms, when they noticed it (and started ignoring it); it's almost always in their 30's and early 40's. They started killing themselves in their 30's!

So, at thirty-four, I've taken my first blood pressure pill and hope the small monthly investment pays bigger dividends thirty years from now despite the shame and the admittance of the inevitable, my body isn't perfect and neither am I. They always say it's the first step. Next step, the right foods and exercise... I'm not there yet.