Blood pressure hit 190 over something or other last time i was in the chair

[sstressed]

Hello.

i don't feel scared or nervous while at the dentist but my mind and blood pressure are apparently not talking to each other. I'm looking for a dentist who will write me a script for my next dental visit. years ago, i forget why but my regular dentist sent me to a specialist but i don't remember what for. this dentist wrote a script for 3 valium, one worked wonders for when she worked on me.

last visit, this nice lady dentist (i prefer women but usually get men) put a BP cuff on me. i was there to have one molar pulled but she said i needed two and she planned on doing both right then. with gas, my BP went from 130ish over something , to 190ish over something. she didn't start working on me yet and asked if i wanted them to contact EMTs. i think i may have missed by BP meds that morning but i'm not sure. that was a couple of years ago. i now have mild pain on three molars when i chew. my veterans admin doctor could not care less about my dental needs so when i mentioned that a couple valium would probably take care of the problem, she ignored me. then again, i was 75ish pounds lighter when the valium worked the last time.

i have been going to the same place for 10 years or so, rarely the same dentist works on me. Now i am missing a few molars and need at least 2 more to be pulled. and somehow i broke off 1/2 of one of my front top teeth.

i'm 69 and very well fed. i am on all kinds of meds for being too fat, too lazy, restless legs, panic attacks, high BP and a few others. living longer chemically!

what kind of dentist should i be looking for? a nice chat won't work, i listen to soft jazz and do a light meditation while in the chair but apparently i'm not very good at it. i've been using oral gel like candy.

i'm in mesa arizona.

 

[Bob N]

@sstressed I am 65, totally stressed at the dentist, take BP meds and have been on Dilantin for epilepsy since I was 7, totally controlled. The Epilepsy meds won and am now finishing up implants at Avila dental in Rosorita Mexico. My cost is 17K vs 70K plus in the US. FYI, my BP with Dr Avila (Loma Linda trained) is normal during all the work.

 

[Neurospicy]

Oh, hon, don't be so hard on yourself. Bodies change shape, that's normal. And almost no one is really lazy. But a lot of people with conditions which limit concentration or cause fatigue are told over and over that we're lazy, for instance if we have ADHD. We're not. And of course you're living longer through medicine, we all are. This is great! No one wants to go back to the days when life expectancy was 30! You deserve to have a long life and to be well cared for. You also deserve to enjoy your food.

It's not your fault that your blood pressure shot up. Did you get a proper workup at the doctor? A friend of mine went to the doctor about headaches and feeling a bit off recently, and the doctor took his BP and sent him straight on to hospital, as it was 200/110. This was not laziness or his weight or anything, it was a hypertensive crisis, most likely caused by having had covid the previous year. He's 43, I think. Covid infections are causing all sorts of damage, especially to the cardiovascular system, and often there is no warning before something serious occurs.

I don't know much about the sedatives used in dentistry, but sometimes people just have odd reactions to drugs, which can include paradoxical agitation from sedatives. Was it your first time on the gas? That dentist was right to stop, because once your blood pressure went that high, the problem was not managing your dentistry but dealing with the sudden sky high blood pressure. You can't just throw a few valium at someone developing dangerously high blood pressure!

Anyway, if you haven't talked to your GP about what happened with your blood pressure, definitely do that, and talk to a dentist about your sedation options. If you are having trouble with forgetting doses of medication, also get help about that. Even if you don't have ADHD, the ADHD community has lots of tips on how to manage medication, because we all have that problem. My partner ran out of his blood thinners for a week last year and had another DVT. (This probably wouldn't have happened if he hadn't had covid, but still.) We changed our medication reminder system after that, which involves both alarms and checking on each other. Pharmacists can also be very helpful with topics like keeping track of medication.

Also I'm a bit unclear on whether you have a dental phobia, or you're really puzzled by why your BP went so high and are guessing it must be a phobia you hadn't realised you had. Could you explain a bit more about this?

 

[Fuzzy5]

Maybe you could ask your GP/Dr for some Diazepam for next time? If it's safe with the other medications that you take?
Good luck x