OK. How to talk to your endo when he insists on prescribing a pill for hbp that you know you cannot take? I'm 76 years old, type 2 since 1998, have high blood pressure and was recently diagnosed by an orthopedic specialist as having spondylitis. He ran tests, asked me a lot of questions and I do not doubt I have it. But, on my last visit to my endo, he had a lot of blood work done (which he doesn't do often enough to please me) and came up with the idea that all diabetics take two pills for hbp. I tried to tell him (not the first time we've had this conversation) that I've gone through all the families of bp meds, and either they do not work or the side effects are too much for me to handle. That's why I only take Bystolic. His response was to hand me a prescription for Losartan/Cozaar, which I discovered by Googeling, that the first side effect was back pain. Hello? And you are not supposed to take an anti-inflammatory drug while on this. To put it mildly, I was thoroughly disgusted. No way am I going to take that pill. I had the feeling he did not believe the diagnosis of spondylitis. So. My question is, how to I approach this doctor or do I find a new one? Oh. Bloodwork showed nothing out of line with my kidneys other than a Ur Alb R <2. Supposed to be 0.0-18.8 Someone on a web site said this figure was normal. This endo hasn't had blood work done on my kidneys in ages. Neither he nor my primary doctor (an internal medicine doctor) has ever said I had a kidney problem. On the other hand, I was diagnosed with fatty liver years ago. He wants me to have more blood work in two weeks. Is this to find out whether the new med is harming my kidneys? I do not understand any of this.
Yvonne