Kate, I don't take anything either, but I would if I had to. I got valium in the hand to get tooth pulled when I was 15.I didn't feel anything.
It took two Valium, a blindfold, music, and trying twice before I could even do a open MRI - was not open enough for me
Those can be scary for sure. And the time it takes doesn't help. Now many have the open MRI. I overcame my claustrophobia ,thank goodness a few decades ago.
I don't understand the MRI thing. It doesn't hurt, in fact you don't feel anything at all. So I just close my eyes before they slide me into the machine. Even the machine noises don't bother me so we're all different. I'm only afraid of things that hurt, lol. @Marie Mallery -- how are you and Jake today?
very claustrophobic , plus me mom had just died and I was a wreck at the time. To much like being buried alive for me. Another reason I will be cremated .
Day 3 for Jake and so far, so good. My leg is looking ok this morning too. Looks like the skin is going to stay in place. Thank you for asking.
Sorry you have claustrophobia, G. The worst MRI I've had was the breast MRI, where you have to lay on your stomach with your boobs hanging through a couple of holes in the metal platform and your arms over your head like Supergirl. Ugh. Just hold that pose for 20 minutes.
I confess to being a bit claustrophobic at times so I do the same thing. I close my eyes before they even slide me into the machine and do not open them until I emerge. I also keep my hands and arms close at my sides so I cannot feel the sides of the chamber. Doing it that way, I have no problems at all. The machines are noisy but I seem to remember they’ve given me little ear plugs every time.
I had an MRI (I think) when I was hit by a car while on a motorcycle. It was interesting to experience it. I felt like a salami going into the slicer.
I get a newsletter from a natural food/foraging website, and today, they were talking about how fermented kale can help reduce high blood pressure while also giving you a lot of important magnesium as well as other vitamins and minerals that are found in greens. The recipe is for making the fermented kale into kind of a kimchi recipe. I am still trying to like kimchi, but if the kale is going to be that healthy, I think that I will try making a small batch and see if I like it better than the fermented cabbage kimchi. Here is the link to the website with the directions, information, and recipe, for anyone else who wants to help reduce their blood pressure naturally. (I am not suggesting that anyone should stop medication, just that this addition to a diet can also be of use in managing blood pressure) https://thelostherbs.com/diy-fermented-kale-for-blood-pressure/?
The way I look at it, if we can fly men to the moon and land them and then safely return them to earth a tooth extraction has to be pretty doggone easy for a dentist. Most people have a little hypertension when at the dentist it is not unusual and in today's world the dentist are much more qualified to extract one safely. I always remember my youth when they would walk around and flash that big needle they were sticking into my mouth. I'm talking about those huge glass type needle bodies that were reusable. That alone was responsible for all the fright.
This last broken tooth I had, as usual dentist had trouble numbing my teeth. He finally resorted to this thing, a Ligmaject, to inject down between the tooth and gum. It’s designed to force the liquid through the porous gum and bone adjacent to the tooth roots. This was for the prep work on the two adjacent teeth to do a bridge.
Tooth pain and anxiety surrounding going to the dentist could itself cause a significant rise in blood pressure. Considering all of the medications that have been developed in order to deal with hypertension, and the possible side effects or repercussions involved in pharmaceuticals, I fear that doctors are too quick to prescribe anti-hypertensives. I'm not speaking to anyone's specific problems here, and I don't doubt that there is a need for pharmaceutical support in these matters, as there are clear dangers involved with high blood pressure. However, I've had more than one doctor try to prescribe medication due to one high blood pressure reading, and I think that's irresponsible. I have both manual and automatic blood pressure monitors here, and I check my own blood pressure periodically, from time to time, and my blood pressure will range from what would be considered hypotensive to hypertensive throughout the day. Maybe some people have blood pressures that are usually the same but, from twenty years as a paramedic and EMT instructor, I know that many people do not. One thing that can usually be depended upon, for me, is the first reading that they take at a doctor's office will be high, not necessarily hypertensive, but higher than most of the others. So, what happens is the doctor walks in and looks at the blood pressure reading that her assistant had determined shortly after I arrived, and will start talking to me about taking medications for high blood pressure. I'll ask her to do another check of my blood pressure, and it will be much lower. However, if I was someone who simply did whatever a doctor suggested, I'd be taking medications for high blood pressure right now, and that wouldn't be appropriate. I'm not an anti-pharmaceutical guy, but I do recognize that there are possible dangers to pretty much every medication, and these would likely be worse when someone is taking a medication he doesn't need to be taking. For example, high blood pressure medications lower blood pressure. That's what they are supposed to do. So what would that do for someone, like me, whose blood pressure (without medications) sometimes falls to 84/56? That is the lowest I've seen in recent years, although I used to regularly have low blood pressures. After a stress test a decade or more ago, a cardiologist prescribed Propranolol for me. Until further testing could be done, I took it for a few weeks, and often, during that time, I experienced chest pains, tightness in the chest, and difficulty breathing, which are all signs of a heart attack. After passing all of the other tests, and finding that they refused to let me review the ECG that they had flagged as a problem, my regular physician told me to quit taking Propranol, after which I've never had these problems again. Blood pressure medications work by making changes to the operation of the heart, the blood vessels, or other body systems, and all medications have some sort of possible side effects, some of which can be fatal. While the danger of taking medications for high blood pressure may be less than that of high blood pressure itself, meaning that the pharmaceutical may be therapeutic, doctors should not prescribe high blood pressure medication unless or until several readings have verified the condition requiring it. I was a paramedic for twenty years. I taught paramedics. I taught the people who taught the paramedics, and I taught Advanced Cardiac Life Support for paramedics, nurses, and doctors. I know how to read an ECG and I certainly know how to check my blood pressure. However, our medical clinic switches doctors out every few years, so I sometimes end up with a doctor who doesn't believe that I know how to take my own blood pressure, so she'd rather accept the reading taken by her assistant, who is using an automatic blood pressure monitor and probably wouldn't know how to take a manual reading. I've learned to question my doctors and to require them to persuade rather than order me to take a new medication.
I once went to to doctor during the winter, and asked the nurse if I should take off my sweater before she put the BP cuff on me. "Nope." The reading was high. (My pressure has always been very low.) My doctor mentioned the high reading, I mentioned the need to train the nurse. We moved on.