One week into the atenolol withdrawal. It feels like it should be 2 weeks. It really hasn't been that bad like past attempts, thanks to being on a norvasc fail-safe back up this time to hold the crazy break out heart rate surges down. I ran into an article last night saying atenolol dampens body response to adrenaline, which has to slowly adjust to a new default kind of reaction. Imagine that all you have to do is laugh about something or get a little tense watching something happening on TV and your heart rate thuds so noticeably that you can't keep laughing or watching TV. Funny thing is, when I checked it (I've learned NOT to check blood pressure all the time, it's counter intuitive) I got 115/74, so heart rate flying up over 88 (which is laughably slow because I lived with SVT for years, yet bothersomely fast because I've been on BP meds for years since then) didn't feel cool. What was stupider was that this time it had woke me up out of a sound sleep. So, cut my BP med dose in half, my blood pressure actually drops.
By the way, never cold turkey off a beta blocker, it's dangerous enough for some people to actually cause a heart attack.
Anyway, wouldn't it be wild if I finally got off the beta blocker after so many years and my blood pressure was so normal that I'd be able to get back off the calcium channel blocker that we're using as a band aid. I can't even imagine life without a blood pressure med, but all my routine physical stuff is getting so healthy now that it's actually possible.
I'm on the other side of the world now in that screen snip at the top. I started in the -8000s, now I'm headed to the positive 10,000 area. The y coordinate is height, so the z coordinate is the other axis, and that's super positive, too.
This is me not only taking on my demons, but taunting them. Cracks me up to see all those arrows in me, so I do this all the time. Check out the cute little turtle at 13 seconds in.
When I said I hoped June wouldn't be noteworthy because the last several months have been so challenging, I didn't foresee getting off this med. I hope this is the biggest breakthrough ever. Just gotta grit my teeth and want it.
