Entertaining blood pressures checks ?!?

The last two days during conference I've volunteered to check blood pressures. Plan A involved Eli and Anna helping with an automatic cuff.

We made up small cards, the size of a business card with the month and year and place for the results on one side.

The second side lists three levels and what to do: good-check in 2-3 years, a little high-check within the month, lower salt intake and drop weigh if heavy, and HIGH go to hospital.

The first thing we learned is that the results from the automatic cuff cannot be relied on so Eli returned to school and Anna stayed to help.

The second thing we learned unexpectedly was how much fun and entertainment could be experienced during group blood pressure screening. Within just a couple of people the speculations began of who's blood pressure would be high vs. good.

Explanations of part of this being genetic and not really under much control of the individual person did nothing to lower the fun. Haitians do not have the privacy issues that one finds in the USA. So we took the pressures in the gazebo with an audience of those waiting and some on-lookers.

Advice to watch or loose weight and lower salt intake also lead to teasing. One young man had his tummy patted while another's right to gain weight was defended by a lady who adamantly
 told me he was not married yet! [Need to investigate this comment-not sure but appeared to me that one is expected to gain weigh after getting married?]

Makes for a noisy location to try to measure blood pressures but with frequent reminders they keep the laughing and comments to a low level.

Fun by all and we identified 24% with stage 1-2 hypertension with only one already  on medications [but due to the conference only taking one dose a day of his twice a day medication!] 16% fell into the pre-hypertension range and should retest in 1 year. Two, including our local pastor we suggested to re-check in 1 week!

Will check any additional folks today. While we'd like to do this as well for the men's and women's conference this month not sure that 1 blood pressure cuff will be enough. May need to recruit help from the nurses.


We enjoyed the end of the 4th. Our homemade patriotic colored popsicles taste good. Both kid's did very well with school this week and didn't grumble a bit about working on a holiday!