Checking your blood pressure is “serious business”. Indeed, there are a lot of things we take lightly which we should take serious when it comes to our health. One of those is the blood pressure. On a personal note, I never knew it was such a serious thing till I started working with the Kidney Health International.
One thing that hit me was when in my line of work I got to know that one of the major causes of kidney disease is high blood pressure. With all that high blood pressure can result too, I find myself educating people wherever I am assigned that, “one of the causes of kidney disease is high blood pressure”
This piece is not from a doctor but from someone who walks about talking to people about how to prevent kidney disease and his experiences from field work. I just want to share with you a few things I have observed.
THERE ARE THE “I DON’T WANT TO KNOW” FOLKS
These people don’t have any idea what their blood pressure is and what their numbers are and they don’t even want to know. For them, “what can come, can come”. They live is a “fools paradise” and some of them tell me “me I am ready to die” and I smile at them. What they don’t know is that doctors don’t exist to “eradicate death”
What doctors do is to help you live a healthy life. If high blood pressure will hit you and in one second you are dead and gone, no one would probably worry you, but you see, when it hits you, it might not kill you in a second. You will end up with something much more painful than you ever imagined, and you, who didn’t want to know your blood pressure, will end up spending everything you have. So, please get to check your blood pressure regularly, after all, it doesn’t even cost or?
I HAVE MET THE “I HAVE STOPPED MY MEDICATION”
This group of people are those who have high blood pressure, they know they are living with it, they have been put on medications and they have stopped their medications for several reasons, and I want to share with you a few that I have observed in my field of work.
One reason some (especially men) have stopped taking their medications is that, when they started taking the medications, the had a reduced “erectile power” (this is my own way of describing it). Whenever I met such men while giving health talks and checking blood pressure, I simply tell them to go back to their doctors and tell them what they feel and then get their doctors to change the drug. Please if you are a man, and you have high blood pressure and you suffer dysfunction in your something, please don’t stop your medications, simply report to your doctor! You will do yourself some good!
I HAVE ALSO MET THE “NTENTAM” FOLKS
Ntentam is an Akan word that means “to wrestle”. These are the people who have decided that they are tired of taking medications and so they are rather going to engage in a long prayer time for God to take away the high blood pressure. Whenever I get their pressure and it is high, I would mostly ask if they had an idea what their pressure was, and they will open up and say, “yes, I know my pressure is high, but I have decided to engage God so that he will take it away from me”
Most the people if not all, who have told me this are women, I remember them so well, and I fear for them. One (the wife of a Pastor) told me point blank that, she has decided that she is going to engage God till he takes it away. The truth is that, God is not under a force to heal anyone even though he as power to do anything he wants to do.
Another, also told me she suspects her condition began as a result of some beverage (Malt) she took from some other person and drank. And so her issue is spiritual.
These are the kind of things we have to battle and I don’t know how we are going to solve these.
IT IS NOT TRUE
This is the last group are those who live in denial, after you have checked their pressure and told them the figure is high, they tell you it is not true! They will argue with all sorts of reasons, some, out of their “faith” some to just “encourage themselves in the Lord” and others just don’t want to accept what you are telling them.
Well, let me end by saying, in the month of May, we at the Kidney Health International will be going round talking to people about high blood pressure, we shall be checking your pressure and we shall be telling you about the link between high blood pressure and kidney disease, and we hope to receive that call from you.
Take care of yourself and stay healthy. From the bottom of my kidneys, thank you for reading.