Mum won’t have blood pressure taken

[Thanksforthatamazingpost]

She’s 79, has a phobia.....
She Hasn’t had it taken for two years.
Does it put her at risk of stroke?

We need a wrist monitor that doesn’t show her irregular heartbeats (she won’t use her at-home one for this reason).

She is ashamed of the phobia but doesn’t seem to know what to do to overcome it.

Has anyone been through this?

Distraction. Can you go with her and either talk about something really interesting or bring a device that has iplayer /Netflix etc on it and watch something together.

Would she maybe have it done manually? That way the person doing it controls the inflation and generally won't do it as tight, and they can also stop at any point. And it doesn't make the machine buzzy noise either

I will suggest those thanks

Its quite a common phobia..I am a CBT therapist and we see it quite regularly. It often helps to approach it in a graded way, so put the cuff on without inflating, inflate partially, cover numbers etc. I guess as she gets older its likely she'll need it doing fairly regularly. If she speaks to gp about it theres lots of support/treatment to work on it. Good luck!

that's a good idea about covering up the numbers....

she is ashamed of the phobia too which doesn't help. I have a claustrophobia problem but I'm not ashamed of it which makes it easier to deal with.

If it makes her feel that anxious to have her BP checked the numbers you get are very unlikely to be representative of her normal blood pressure and she'd quite likely end up being treated for hypertension when she doesn't actually have it (and getting the associated side effects of having her BP dropped when she doesn't need it). If she's made it to 79 with no problems she's probably fine.

I suspect her GPs have "allowed" the situation to go on for this long for exactly that reason Walking.

But I'm hopeful she can overcome the phobia.

thank you!