I'm only able to keep up with the minimum right now as I'm lethargic and sleeping a lot. Since I knew I wouldn't get much done, I went to a doc today for a yearly heart check. I'd gone to a nearby tiny clinic a couple of weeks ago because a pharmacy read my blood pressure at 150/100. The doc at the clinic said you can't rely on those digital tests and did a manual and got 130/85 which is good but said I had bronchitis. He also said I had an irregular heart beat and to check it out with an EKG. Today the cardiologist at the nearby public hospital, the newest and most modern in Bali, said it was 150/100 and to take some mild blood pressure med. But he said the EKG was good. My heart's fine, beats a little slow and the irregularity isn't bad and I've had it a long time (he could see my whole medical history). So I went back to the clinic and the young Saturday doc there said my blood pressure was 110 over 70 (unusally low) after he did a manual and said they only do manual and my irregular heartbeat is normal, not bad, because it adds a beat which makes up for it being a little slow. He also said that lethargy following bronchitis is normal especially for my age because there was a battle going on in my lungs and bombs were dropped and so forth and now it's being rebuilt. He drew me a picture of normal and good irregular and bad irregular and explained that the top number in blood pressure is systolic, the blood to the body, and the bottom one I forgot the name - like pistolic - is the blood to the lungs. Never knew that. Anyway, walked four kilometers going from place to place which made me feel better than lying down. Still only on cardio aspirin. Oh - total cost of the today's doctor's visits and EKG was about thirty-four bucks. - DC
"The right ventricle pumps the oxygen-poor blood through the pulmonary valve to the lungs. The left atrium receives oxygen-rich blood from the lungs and pumps it through the mitral valve to the left ventricle. The left ventricle pumps the oxygen-rich blood through the aortic valve out to the rest of the body."
ReplyDeletehttps://myhealth.alberta.ca/Health/pages/conditions.aspx?hwid=aa54865
Blood pressure is measured using two numbers: The first number, called systolic blood pressure, measures the pressure in your arteries when your heart beats. The second number, called diastolic blood pressure, measures the pressure in your arteries when your heart rests between beats.
https://www.cdc.gov/bloodpressure/about.htm
I was confused, and you were no help! Confusion was between the roles of the sides of the heart (right--blood to the lungs, left--blood to the body) and the significance of systolic and diastolic (pressure in the artieries when the heart beats, pressure in the arteries between beats).
Glad you're feeling better, David. Warm thoughts,
Mark Foote