So the weirdest thing happened to me last weekend when I was in the hospital room visiting Beth, Josh, and Olivia. For no apparent reason, I came very close to passing out. I might have – when I started losing consciousness, I found my way to the bathroom and closed my eyes… everything went black for a few seconds, so I might have fainted. I didn’t wake up on the floor or anything, though. I began to feel better and decided to splash some water on my face. When I looked in the mirror over the sink, my face was significantly whiter than the rest of my body.

I felt awful for a few hours after that episode. Paul suggested that perhaps it was blood pressure. I know that I’ve always had low blood pressure – people taking it twice because they thought they had done it wrong the first time. Also there are a few other things – not being able to swing on swings because of dizziness, whenever I go from a horizontal position to a vertical position (or even just sitting to standing), I get really dizzy and sometimes fall backwards. I always thought that was normal but I’ve been asking around and apparently I’m weird.

So anyway Paul and I stopped at Kroger on our way back to Atlanta last Sunday and while we were in the store I had another of dizzy spell. It wasn’t nearly as bad, but I spotted a blood pressure machine in the store so I took advantage. My reading was 115/63. Apparently, normal is 130/85. What does this mean? Should I be concerned?

My internet research isn’t helpful. It is trying too hard to connect low blood pressure with something – medicine, diabetes. I don’t take any medications and I’m pretty sure I don’t have diabetes (since I looked up diabetes and I don’t experience any of the symptoms they listed).

Paul wants me to go to the doctor. I don’t want to pay for a doctor to tell me I’m a hypochondriac (I’ve been told that all my life by my mom and I am scared now to act on anything that I am feeling). Is low blood pressure a concern? Perhaps mine isn’t low enough to worry about. Am I making all this up? Maybe I’m just dehydrated?

Now I’m trying to decide if this is worth a trip to the doctor… which could be really expensive and my insurance doesn’t click in until $500. :-(