I limit what I share. That’s true in life and includes my blogging.

One, I’m a private individual. Two, I don’t want it to appear as if I don’t respect and appreciate that I have it pretty good. Three, I’m boring and lead a boring life. At the same time, I sometimes decide to share because I endure something in isolation, hunting information, coping and struggling. I suspect that I’m not alone.

So, Ima gonna talk about my feet and ankles. Yes, but this is actually about edema, sodium, and hypertension.

Hypertension has plagued me my entire life. Brief doctor checkups were required when I was a child in my early teens first trying out for an organized sport. The first time, the physician said two things: “You have high blood pressure, and your ears need cleaned.”

When I was in the military, physicians would regularly order me to go through a week of coming into the clinic, hospital, or infirmary daily to check my blood pressure every day. I never paid much attention to it. It was always kind of high and never changed.

I should have been paying attention. That’s on me and my overconfidence and ignorance.

My hypertension finally caught up with me and began manifesting as edema several years ago. I have Mom’s very slender ankles, ankles which my wife always envied. Now they’re puffy. Swollen. Discolored. Stiff.

My healthcare team isn’t quite sure what causes my edema, whether it’s actually my lymph nodes, or venous insufficiency. I don’t want to oversimplify; multiple factors influence it. I always figure venous insufficiency played a large part, but I’ve also discovered that my body doesn’t deal well with sodium. Sodium is used in cooking, baking, and food processing as flavoring and a binding agent and preservative. My body decided it can’t stand sodium. When my blood results come back, high sodium levels always stand out as critically high.

This all came to a huge issue for me when I sprained my right ankle, first in May, then again in June. Both times, I was just moving when — snap – crack — my right ankle gave out and I went down in a blaze of pain.

The second time this happened, I couldn’t believe how much my foot and ankle swelled. Suckers ballooned into huge sizes. Shoes would not fit, limiting my footwear and activities.

I’ve been on amlodipine for several years to help with my blood pressure. I’d quit taking it for reasons I couldn’t even quite define for myself. I don’t know what I was thinking, for real. I resumed the med in early June. But when I went in for my annual check with my PCP in late June, my BP was 169/89. That concerned her.

It concerned me as well. She urged me to track my BP for two weeks and report the results back to her. Take your blood pressure morning and evening every day, she said. If it stayed high, we would need to address my meds. I agreed.

The first week’s results were horrendous. My right foot and ankle were also regularly swollen during that period. So was my left ankle. All of this was depressing. After the first week, I stopped tracking my blood pressure for a day because I was so upset. I had to make changes.

I’d been watching my sodium levels since the edema began manifesting. Now I carried it to hyper-vigilant levels. High levels of sodium are in so many foods. Condiments like mayo and mustard were gone, along with any salad dressings, pickles, olives, etc. I mean, I’d already cut them substantially back but now they were completely verboten. I’d treat myself to bacon once in a while before; no more. The butter we use has sodium; it was cut off. Bread was cut out. Rolls. Cheese. Salsa. Guacamole. Many favorite foods were simply eliminated from my diet. Raw fruits and veggies, which I’d always eaten in regular quantities, were eaten more frequently. I also increased my water intake. I cut down on my coffee consumption, and whenever I go to the coffee shop, I order a glass of water with my coffee. Desserts and treats are off the table.

The results paid off. My two-week average when I turned in my records to my PCP was 134/79. I had several second week readings in the 120/70 range. I had one reading of 117/72, and another of 106/69. My right foot’s swelling subsided. My ankles’ swelling declined. Besides that, I lost six pounds and an inch off my waist. I became more limber and flexible and slept better.

What I sort of realized/hypothesized was that the edema and swelling which I saw in my feet and ankles were happening internally as well. As things reacted to more fluids and less sodium, that unseen swelling also diminished.

Anyway, that’s my story. If you’re out there dealing with hypertension, high blood pressure, and struggling with edema and sodium, you’re not alone. I feel for you. I hope you can make changes and that those changes result in improvements.

They did for at least for me. It’s not over, though. I remain on that strict, almost completely sodium-free diet. Sometimes, we need to face it, this is how it must be.

And that’s how it is.

Cheers