"Blood pressure refers to the force exerted by circulating blood on the walls of blood vessels," says Wikipedia, & then presents to you some awesome terms which medical service folks get to use that no one else does. Note: this has very little to do with salt. I am just obsessing about blood pressure.
This has become more common in recent years, but I've always dug hypertension. It sounds like a super power, yeah? No! It's as bad a thing as real life gamma rays! Wikipedia, do me like your best girlfriend: "Hypertension, referred to as high blood pressure, HTN or HPN, is a medical condition in which the blood pressure is chronically elevated."
Even better, you could suffer from white coat hypertension. As opposed to black belt hypertension, jack boot hypertension, & the always nasty dirty undergarment hypertension, which is what I suffer from for reasons I can't be bothered to explain.
Hypotension is not nearly as interesting, mainly because hypertension sounds like your bodies about to explode & that's so totally Scanners.
Term number two: preeclampsia. Oh, it sounds like something rich white folks on the east coast spend a lot of money to get their kids into so they can go to the best schools, but my bitch Wikipedia knows the score: "Preeclampsia is a medical condition where hypertension arises in pregnancy (pregnancy-induced hypertension) in association with significant amounts of protein in the urine." Extra bonus points from mentioning urine!
Term number third: systole. Wikipedia! Testify: "Systole (rhymes with 'fiscally') is the contraction of heart chambers, driving blood out of the chambers." I know, it's only one of the measures of blood pressure, but doesn't "diastole" sound like the name of a Dutch prog-rock band? One is contraction, the other is expansion. Okay, maybe the prog-rock band would be called Systole-Diastole. But I think that diastole is boring. Systole rocks!
The coup de grace: sphygmomanometer. What the fuck?
Hey Wikipedia! Do it to me one more time: "A sphygmomanometer is a device used to measure blood pressure, comprising an inflatable cuff to restrict blood flow, & a mercury or mechanical manometer to measure the pressure." It comes from the Greek word for pulse, or the layperson's word for "fuckin' know-it-all just tell me which pills I gotta take."
By the way, waiting rooms are weird & it may be just me but there seem to be more women in them than men. Do men just not go to doctors? We don't, do we? We drop dead instead. Go us!
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