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vividsailor7 said:Looking at that list of tests, it seems like they are being incredibly thorough and covering every single base.
How long have you been taking Amlodipine?
vividsailor7 said:Amlodipine is typically the go-to first choice for older patients, especially when dealing with systolic hypertension.
You didn't mention your age, but your BP is definitely elevated, so you really ought to get a full workup at the Institute of Nephrology and Hypertension at the Mayo Clinic.
They’ll need to run a whole battery of tests—things like glucose, insulin, electrolytes (K, Na, Ca, P), kidney function (creatinine, urea, urates), urinalysis, 24-hour proteinuria, TSH, VMA, aldosterone (serum/urine), cortisol rhythm, ACTH, catecholamines, a lipid panel, and so on.
Basically, it all depends on your specific clinical indications, overall status, and general findings.
Follow-up diagnostics might also include a TTE, CT angiography, renin levels, etc.
William Sanchez80 said:I've spent enough time in hospitals myself to know the score—the ratio of good nurses to bad ones is basically 40:60. And honestly? That 40% of decent people gets totally overshadowed by the other 60%. Look, it's true they’re underpaid, overworked, and stressed out of their minds, but let's be real—there are just a ton of incompetent, clueless people in the mix who can't even hit a vein or start an IV properly. I actually saw this happen once where some useless nurse missed a vein so badly the IV fluid was just leaking under the skin, creating this huge lump... and when we called her out on it, she had the nerve to claim the patient just sprained her wrist or something and basically told us to get lost. Since we weren't having any of it, we called over another nurse, who—of course—fixed the mess immediately and hit the vein perfectly. The kicker? That incompetent nurse actually got pissed at the competent one for "touching" her patients. Thank God the second nurse had the guts to step in and say, "Fine, I'll fix it," even though she knew she'd deal with the drama afterward. And man, did she...
And don't even get me started on that young nurse who was caught on video hooking up with two techs right in the middle of her shift while patients actually needed help. That footage ended up on porn sites and made headlines in The New York Times. I'm betting she didn't even get fired—everything was probably swept under the rug. If I were the Secretary of Health back then, I would've hunted her down myself. Every hospital director in the country would have been summoned to my office, and nobody would have had a moment of peace until they dragged her to the Department of Health just so I could look her in the eye and hand her a termination notice personally... just thinking about how many incompetent, godforsaken people are in that profession... it makes me BLOOD BOILING
It's a tough job and yeah, they're slammed, but the reality is they're protected like cornered bears. They can be ignorant and screw up constantly, but they'll NEVER lose their jobs unless they do something absolutely insane! If you actually have proof that medical staff messed up, you have to go after them—hit up the directors, the ethics boards, the legal system, and patient advocacy groups... you probably won't achieve much, but maybe things will change eventually. At the end of the day, if there's a constant stream of complaints against the same person, someone is finally going to get fired, and maybe they'll be at the top of that list... hopefully?