One for the baby book.

I went to the doctor and she was suitable appauled by my new and unimproved blood pressure. She made me an appointment for an ecocardigram and gave me an additional  blood pressure med. I went home and googled my new drug and discovered that among its plethera of unpleasent side effects was chronic dry cough I already have a chronic dry cough! I don't need an additional dry cough! The other one is not lonley or looking to meet new dry coughs.

I went to a forum and found many, many people who hate the med - keeping in mind people who like the med don't go to forums to talk about how much they love it and what a fab job its doing. That kind of talk is boring, forums are populated by people who hate the med and its thousand different awful side effects. I for one look forward additionally to the insomnia, leg pain, fainting and severe itching - all of which were complained about at length. My question was, why stay on a medication that is doing those things to you? If my cough gets worse,  the new med off the table and the doctor can give me a different one. Period. I'm not going to bitch about it on a forum, I'm going to bitch about it to my doctor. Whateve, but if they weren't bitching about it on a forum, I would only have the official sites to tell me about the drug and they down play the negatives.

The echocardiogram will be something new to put in the baby book and  an interesting change of pace. I've never had one before, I've had two EKGs done, both normal, but its nice to know everything is working, I can hardly just take myself apart and see whats the problem is. Would that I could though. The echo is also going to come out clean, because the cough is from nowhere and nothing is causing it.

I understand that an echocardiogram is very similar to an ultrasound that would be performed on a pregnant woman, except higher up and not looking at a fetus. That was almost a direct quote from a web site I went to to see what an echocardiogram entailed, my own doctor called it a "heart sonogram". I wasn't familiar with this teat so I had to look it up, if she would have said "echocardiogram" I would have known what she was talking about the first time. I think she said it that way to make it sound fluffier and less clinical, she tries to keep the White Coat Anxiety to a minimum by looking like a gym bunny and using baby words. This causes me anxiety.