I’m 24 and dealing with high blood pressure. I’ve seen five doctors, had countless tests, and they all say the same thing: “Take these pills and try to reduce pressure in your life.” It’s as though my blood pressure and heart rate have minds of their own, fluctuating freely without any reason.
For the past six months, I’ve felt like I’m on borrowed time. Every morning, I gulp down my pills, hoping I won’t have a stroke or end up disabled. Once, I dared to think I was better and skipped my meds for two days. Unfortunately, on day three, my blood pressure shot up over 150, bringing me crashing back to reality.
I’m not an nihilist, I’m the opposite of that. But facing my own mortality every second of life has hit me hard. Maybe I’m just like a “24 years old kid” tasting life’s bitterness for the first time. I hate to compare myself with others, but seeing friends partying, doing drugs, and sipping coffee just makes me hate this fate of mine even more.
I’m an artist, I studied music and wrote lots of songs (only keep them for myself, not trying to be a celebrity or anything like that…), and music has always been my escape. Lately, though, my songs have been pretty dark.
I’m sharing my story not for sympathy, but to connect with anyone else who’s going through a same journey in their life. If you’ve been there and made it out, please tell me how you did it. Any advice, hobby, or habit would help! And if you’re still stuck in the trenches like me, just know you’re not alone.
P/S: This post has been improved by ChatGPT since I’m not confident in my English.
Now I’ve had a flare up of ulcerative colitis for most of the year and I was in hospital about a month ago and discharged after 6 days which was a month ago. I’m now back in hospital because my disease didn’t improve at home and now it looked like I was responding to the treatment in hospital but things are going they way they went after I was discharged so fuck knows what they’ll do. I’ve a specialist nurse in charge of my general care and a consultant who calls the shots on the treatment. The nurse wants me on a medication that’s taken as an IV ASAP and the consultant wants me to take the previous prescribed medication that hasn’t worked despite working in 48 hours according to the manufacturer. So as the current treatment probably won’t work I fucking hope that the consultant don’t just decide “eh fuck it, let’s just open up his bowel and give the fucker a stoma bag”
I’m not in the US by the way I’m the UK and the NHS where I live is actually pretty good and the staff in general is great I’m the hospital I’m in and my nurse is great. I just don’t really like my consultant as any time he’s seen me in hospital it’s only for a minute asking how I’ve been and then he fucks off. It’s like he’s not interested in really finding out things in depth whereas the nurse and I will discuss things and she’ll explain why certain foods are harmful for me during a flare and how to work around that and she’ll explain the medication I’m on.
Yuck. I’ve had gastric issues for so long. I wish you a speedy and full recovery.
I wish I just had gastric issues. IBD is basically inflammation of the bowel that’s caused by the immune system being in overdrive so basically the immune system is attacking the bowel. So it causes frequent need for the toilet in my case between 10 times to 20 times a day, I’ve had a temporary form of arthritis that caused swelling on my feet, I regularly suffer anemia and all the symptoms with that, I’ve lost weight, I was a UK large in clothes and now they’re baggy as fuck on me so I could be a small now, I end up with no appetite so I end up going days without eating or only eating a sandwich, I regularly haven’t slept for a months because I have to get up every hour for the toilet and with IBD when you need to go you need to go no, there’s no such thing as holding it. It’s also a chronic illness/disease so I’ll have to live with it the rest of my life.
Not to be one of those guys but have you tried cannabis for your symptoms? I have a friend with what you describe who I know treats all the symptoms effectively with a small bit of cannabis (vaped, pure) that means mostly he’s fine day to day. Also it’s legal in the UK, as you would be eligible for a medical prescription; it costs a bit and isn’t the best quality from all I’ve seen but you can always get whatever as long as you keep a prescription pot on you.