White coat syndrome and anxiety in the family

[housewife]

Does anyone else suffer or know of someone with white coat syndrome?

I suffer from blood pressure monitor syndrome. Seriously, I get really high readings at the doctor’s office and normal readings at home.

I have an Aunt who goes through the same thing. My DM always tells me that I am just like her. I wonder if that is the case and if its heredetary because I do consider myself a person who worries too much for everything.

I get anxious about going to the doctor simply because I don’t want for my blood pressure to be taken because I already know that it will be high.

I pray and pray and maybe I am not praying hard enough…

This is serious. I can’t live like this. I am pregnant with our 4th child and afraid of all this turning into something worst.

Any thoughts/comments are welcome.

 

[maryjk]

I had never heard of it until this past summer. I had been admitted overnight because of chest pain. It turned out to be nothing, but the whole time I was there, my blood pressure was high. High enough that the Resident thought it was a problem. When I told him that I always have had low blood pressure, he asked for the normal numbers. I gave them to him. And he declared that I must have White Coat Syndrome. My blood pressure is fine at home and at the doctor’s office. But put me in the hospital and up it goes.

As long as your blood pressure is normal at home, that should be fine. Record your readings and show those to him. It doesn’t make any sense to put you on medication if it only goes up at the office.

 

[Nepenthe]

Quite so. If your readings are normal at home, you are very likely fine on the blood pressure front. It is 100% normal for readings to go up, even frighteningly up, when your are either anxious, or in pain.

If your physician is concerned, why, ask him if you can take your own daily readings at home and track them for a while, taking notes as to circumstances briefly (ie, are you in pain, how far along your pregnancy is, anything particularly upsetting recently, so on and so forth) or most pharmacies have those cuff-machines that’ll take a reading for you (although if it’s okay, check it against your own reading with a manual sphygmomanometer -not a word I trot out everyday, that- to calibrate) on a daily or at least regular basis. If your doctor has spoken with your pharmacist, you could even get it initialed as you go.

Being nervous about either doctors themselves or medical conditions in general is, of course, common as dirt. It’s okay, try not to let it screw up the overall picture, and your participation will give your physician a better view of exactly what the overall picture really is.

 

[Zelie_Louis]

Please discuss this with your health care practitioner and come up with a solution that both of you are comfortable with following. Suggestions for managing blood pressure readings is not appropriate for CAF - we do not allow medical advice to be given or sought.