We always take our health for granted

A recent appointment with my doctor changed my whole life within 5 minutes of my checkup.

I scheduled a doctor appointment because I had been having pain in my shoulder for few months and it had become unbearable. While I was sitting in the waiting room listening for my name to be called, I was thinking of everything that would need to be done:

1.??????Take an x-ray of my arm

2.??????Possibly take an MRI of my arm

3.??????Hopefully they could just give me a shot to numb the pain so I could go back to work

4.??????I have a trip planned for Cancun in May; I hope this heals by then

5.??????How long is this going to take?

Finally, after 10 minutes my name is called, “Mrs. Hubbard come on back”.?As I walk to the weighing scale and blood pressure machine, I’m dreading seeing my weight. Wow, I was shocked, I had lost 16 lbs.?I had been watching my dietary intake and was walking a little more when I had the time, but I had not done anything extra ordinary for weigh loss.?So, I was pleasantly surprised and smiled to myself.

Next came the blood pressure check. As I’m smiling inwardly about my weight loss, I noticed the pain in my arm coming from the pressure of the blood pressure cuff. I looked at my fingers and they were blue.?I looked at the nurse and she had a strange look on her face as she watched the numbers on the blood pressure machine.?When it finished, she asked me when I last took my blood pressure pills.?Ummmm….I had forgotten them that morning. ?But I take them on a regular basis, every morning before my coffee.?It didn’t dawn on me to ask the nurse why she asked that question. I have been under a bit of stress so I figured it would be a bit high, but I thought nothing of it. The nurse took it again.?This time she didn’t say anything and sent me to my exam room.?When the Dr. came in, she had an extremely concerned look on her face and said, “I can’t exam you and I can’t let you leave the office because your blood pressure has entered hypertension stress levels, 182/120”.?Guilty…I didn’t fully understand blood pressure readings.?So, I’m thinking, “yep, I know it’s a little high”.?She says to me that I don’t understand, I was in the range to have a stroke or heart attack.?“WHAT?” was of course my response.

She administered an emergency pill to bring my blood pressure down, and after sitting in the Dr. office for 30 minutes, it moved down to 175/117.?She allowed me to leave with very specific instructions to go home, relax, try not to think about anything and take my blood pressure again in an hour.?Stunned, I drove home trying to figure out why my blood pressure was suddenly so high.?But then I started remembering that I had been feeling physically “off” for a few weeks.?I had constant headaches and I felt pressure in my head and behind my eyes, but I thought it was due to sinuses and allergies. I felt pressure in my general chest area, and I felt like my heart was racing, but I thought it was because I had started exercising a bit, walking the stairs at work as often as I could.?

I went home and talked it all over with my husband and he took me to a drug store to take my pressure again. It was now 198/125.?We went straight to the neighborhood ER where they immediately took me through intake, gave me aspirin, hooked me up to a lot of tubes and wires and gave me emergency meds to help reduce my blood pressure immediately. Here is where I must explain that my family has a generational curse pertaining to health. ?We were conditioned by our ancestors to overlook “not feeling good”, because historically speaking, the “system” was not set up to allow us to be sick.?We had to push through the pain and keep it moving, so that is what I did.?4 hours later, sitting on that very small ER table, my blood pressure had elevated to 207/120.?The ER doctor came in and an put me on a med drip and calmly told me that they were transferring me to the ICU.?I immediately sat straight up on that little bed and said, “THE WHAT??I’M GOING TO THE WHAT? WHY? I think you maybe made a mistake.?I always feel like this.?I just need to get some sleep”.?She looked at me incredulously and said,” it’s not normal to feel like this.?You are lucky to be alive right now”.

Ok, let me get this right; my shoulder was hurting so I went to the doctor for a regular appointment at 2pm, it is now 11:30pm and I am now on my way to the ICU.?How does that even work? After staying in the ER literally all night, a bed finally opened at 3am.?I took the dreaded ride in the ambulance to the hospital.?By the time I got there, my blood pressure had dropped to 192/117, but still dangerously too high. I ended up staying in the hospital for 2 ? days with no diagnosis for why my blood pressure spiked out of control even on the elevated amount of medicine they were giving me.?After two days of trial and error, they finally found a combination that worked and got my pressure down to an acceptable and controlled level, although it was still abnormally high. I was finally released with a ton of information in blood pressure and how to maintain it. Unfortunately, we could never figure out why my pressure remains high, but I am now equipped with more information to properly maintain healthy levels.

Before all of this happened, I did not take proper care of myself.?Everyone and everything came first: husband, mother, kids, work, and school.?As a mom and COO of a fully functional and excessively busy household, I mostly overlooked any time that I didn’t “feel right” because the world doesn’t stop, things still must get done. Women habitually put themselves last and unfortunately, often their health suffers as a result. I no longer overlook myself.?I now pay more attention to my body and my mental and emotional health. As I watched my daughter sleep in the hospital room with me because she refused to leave, I realized that I was passing on to her the same unhealthy generational curse that was passed on to me by my mothers before me. ?I now teach my whole family about self-care and self-health.?You have to pause, breath life and experience its beauty through rest and relaxation.?As my husband always says, “The world needs you”.?Now I treat myself like it does.

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Kimberly Hubbard currently serves as an instructional dean for the largest community college in Texas, with oversight of IT and Visual Communications programs.?She also serves as a professor. With over 20 years of experience in both the private and public sector, her area of expertise is in the field of information technology and information security. She has held a variety of managerial and administration positions in IT operations, IT training, IT resource management, business management and education. Dean Hubbard also owned her own business, Hubbard Group and Associates, which specialized in IT recruiting, training, and systems administration. She holds a BS in Physics from LSU-Shreveport, an MBA and an MS in Information Systems and Security from Our Lady of the Lake University. She is currently a doctoral candidate in the field of organizational leadership at Our Lady of the Lake University.