For quite some time, I’ve usually been that type of guy that just never goes to the doctor, unless something is actively wrong. Never did any annual checkups, physicals or anything other than eye exams or going to urgent care for what always seems like prednisone whenever I go. I often used to say this stemmed from not wanting to miss out on work on account of the long stretch when I was freelancing and contracting, and when I wasn’t working then I wasn’t earning, but the truth is that even when I had landed full-time work with actual benefits, I still didn’t go then either, even if I were paying for it.
Then I got married, and that didn’t really change, except for the fact that I now had a wife that encouraged me to go, but I still made excuses and dragged my feet and resisted going, because I just didn’t really want to. I felt fine, I exercised regularly, and I didn’t eat like a shithead too much, so I never felt like it was worth going since I felt fine, strong and healthy.
But then I had children, and I crossed into 40, so I finally relented and made the effort to at the very least, have an annual, just to make sure things were copacetic. And last year, it was about what I had suspected, I was pretty much fine, with no real concerns. I had little reason to think it was going to be any different this year, but if that were the case then I wouldn’t be writing this post now, would I?
The TL;DR is that it turns out that I’ve put on a not-insubstantial amount of weight, and my blood pressure is kind of high. The thing is that despite the weight gain, my clothes all fit the same, save for some tightness in the chests of my shirts, but my pants all still fit, I still use the same rung on my belts, and I don’t really feel any different than I did physically a year ago, or longer.
But I don’t want to be the asshole who gets all “uuhhhhhh muscle weighs more than fat brah” and humble brag that I’ve been hitting the weights, and that my weight gain is solely based on the fact that I’ve been going to the gym with consistency over the last two years, versus the nearly two-year stretch in which I dropped a lot of muscle mass because of COVID affecting my ability to hit a gym. Of course, I did hit my share of lazy stretches where my household eats a bunch of fast food or dines out/takes out more than we really should, but I do like to believe that some of my weight gain really is having put on some muscle mass back on over the last year.
The bigger thing though, is the blood pressure reading, that was high enough to where the tech and my doctor wanted to point it out as being high. My knee-jerk reaction was to ask just how much correlation there is between BP and stress, to which the answer was a high one, and I feel like I already know why I’m having elevated blood pressure.
There’s no sugar-coating it, my life is pretty difficult these days, as far as I’m concerned. Ironically, work is probably the least stressful part of my life, and as much as I bitched about having to go into the office four days a week, I’m actually pretty chill while at the office, and I take a tremendous amount of solace in knowing that I can go to the gym every day I go to there, and try and improve myself in some facet.
But parenting two young toddlers, chasing them around, and trying to stave off their boredom and all the rigors of parenting two in general, that really wears me out. I haven’t had a real break from parenting since like December, and I don’t remember the last time I got to sleep in was. Maybe it was December.
I get up every single day at 7 am, regardless of if it’s a weekday or weekend, it’s all the same in the life of parenting. I don’t get nearly enough help, and I’ve had to come clean to myself that one of my biggest flaws is that I expect people to read my mind or read the room and see that I’m burnt out, and when nobody does, it burns me out even more, all of which is probably leading to my general levels of stress and subsequent elevation of my blood pressure.
I’m always worried about money, because I’m Korean and Koreans are inherently financially cognizant, and I always fear about being unable to support the lifestyle that is wanted for my kids, and being able to pay the bills and just trying to keep my head above water and feeling like I’m not doing a very good job at it. Again, I wish I had more help in this regard, but until I really try to come up with solutions on my own and present it in a digestible manner, I’m still going to swirl around in this pool with no real progress in sight.
Needless to say, I endure a lot of stress on a regular basis, and I don’t think I really need to think hard to know why I have blood pressure issues right now. The doc asked me to get a BP monitor and take daily readings and log them, and let her know in a month or so to see what’s up. I did, and I’ve been mortified to see that the first few readings not only haven’t been getting any better, but they’re (I think) worse than they were when I was at my annual.
And this is where I circle back to wishing that I just didn’t know anything about this in the first place. Physically, I still feel fine. I still run regularly, which is my barometer to know if something is up, because when I’m feeling off, it’s reflected in my running ability, but I’m still running a sub-30 5K, and I feel that my stamina and endurance is good as it ever has been, if not a little reduced for the fact that I’m aging and I’m not pushing myself like I’m 27 anymore.
I feel like knowing that I’m measuring high BPs stresses me out further, and I’ve noticed that ensuing BP tests because the first one was obviously bullshit usually come out worse than the previous one, and it’s evident that it gets in my head that BP is an issue, and it feels like the mere thought of it causes me to measure worse each successive time.
Even before my annual, and doing bloodwork, and seeing that my cholesterol was also a little higher, I’ve been cleaning up my eating habits and making an earnest attempt to drop a little weight, just because I don’t like the fact that I’ve crept past the 200 lb. threshold again and am closer to a former president’s fictional weight than I am where I like to be able to say I’m at.
But the fact of the matter is, regardless of how melted down I generally am these days, I was probably a modicum happier not knowing about the physical specifics of my state. I know that that’s not a great perspective, and that preventive care can help a laundry list of bad ailments from becoming a reality, but on the daily, it’s really fucking up my juju, and regardless of knowing I’m still doing the right thing, I still wish I were back to the state of life where I didn’t know.
