A True Blood Pressure Story

I've been taking allergy shots for a year now and have just two more years of monthly visits to the allergy clinic to achieve immunity to the pesky yellow jacket.

Today was time for my checkup.

Before she gave me two shots, the nurse who has been shooting me proceeded to take my temperature and my blood pressure.

"Good!" she said after releasing me from the blood pressure meter cuff. "One-ten over seventy."

"Hmm," I said. "I can make my blood pressure high or low."

"You can?" She was dubious but quickly put the cuff back on to see if my claim had a ghost of validity. She shook her head in disbelief as she read the dial. "One-fifty," she said. "One-fifty over eighty. How do you do that?"

"I just think 'low, low, low' when I want it to be a low reading and 'high, high, high" when I want it to read high."

"I've heard about people like you," she said, still shaking her head. "I didn't think they really existed."

This is a true story...