A Walk Through Life

After learning that my side of the family has a history of hypertension, my husband began to worry for me. He reminded me to keep my weight down and to avoid eating anything that would eventually trigger high blood pressure. In fact, I remembered how nervous he got when I had hypertension after giving birth to Dippy. He and I really thought that was the start of my long battle with hypertension. Thankfully, it was just classified as postpartum hypertension and it went away a few months later. Luckily, I didn't have to buy my own blood pressure BP monitor at that time. Well, there was really a time when I had thought of using my earnings to buy the digital type. After all, I knew I should be checking my blood pressure because I was told that there's a big chance that a postpartum hypertension could advance into chronic hypertension. Incidentally, I found a few medical equipment suppliers that are selling the brand that I like. However, dad had let me use my late mom's digi...

After reading Shanix's blog about birth control , I also thought of writing about it. At first, I thought that it's a little awkward to talk about it on my blog. Talking about sex and stuffs like that is quite uncomfortable for me. I only talk about it hush-hush with some female friends. Anyway, I realized that just like the celebrities, I needed to take on more mature roles. Hehehe. How did I get pregnant, anyway? So there you go. After giving birth via c-section, I'm expected not to get pregnant within two to three years. Something to do with healthy pregnancy. My health, in general. Prior to giving birth, we've already agreed that we would only try the Billings method as our recourse for family planning. This is what the church had taught us during our pre-cana seminar. We were told that taking birth control pills, ligation and any other non-natural birth control methods are said to be "anti-life" and the church is against this. So that's my fear. Being...

it's been awhile since i've last monitored my blood pressure. i felt like everything's going back to normal. or so i thought. when i went back to my ob gyne last sunday for a post-natal checkup, i had a BP reading of 130/90. i used to be 110/70 prior to pregnancy. doctor said that i might be hypertensive already. chronic hypertension, that is. she will refer me to an internist when my BP wouldn't go down below 130/90 after june 6th. i think that's already past the 6-week recovery period from c-section. she said that 130/90 BP is a boundary between normal and hypertensive and with that, i need to closely monitor my BP. nowadays, i am told, a systolic of 90 and above needs aggressive treatment because of a high incidence of stroke in patients ages 30 and above. whew, that's the scary part. i guess i would need to closely monitor my BP again, and eat healthy foods. *sigh*

I got an early message from dad this morning. He said that this was the same day and time, a year ago today, when they (he and my brother) had forced open the bathroom door because mom just fell down and fainted while taking a shower. Earlier that day, he and mom were cleaning the room. It looked like an ordinary day until mom took a shower and they heard a loud noise coming from the bathroom. They immediately lifted her and rushed her back to the bedroom. There was no bleeding or a bump in the head. This incident happened in Medellin, in the northernmost part of Cebu. Our family took refuge there when dad was hired to do the job as mill shift engineer after the sugar milling in San Carlos City declared bankruptcy. I was in Mandaue working. The news just shocked me. When mom awoke, she wasn’t aware of what had happened to her but she said she had a terrible headache. She felt dizzy when she got up but had managed to go to the CR with my brother’s assistance to answer the call of nature...