Anybody experience long term blood pressure drop post COVID-19 vaccine?

[killerv]

Yep, my wife works in the hospital. She keeps telling me and my boys that we better not hurt ourselves doing anything stupid. Because if we aren't bleeding to death or about to die, we aren't getting a room. Insane wait times in the ER due to staffing shortages. Self imposed shortages I might add...

Yep, my wife is an unvaccinated nurse and she working like crazy, they are constantly having staff out, mostly due to covid but 9 out of 10 are fully vaxxed. They are the ones missing work. Makes no sense. Their vaxxed lead nurse was admitted to the hospital with covid. That pretty much stopped the mandate talk at their office....for now. Its hard to tell your employees to get the jab when they see what it is doing to coworkers and patients. These arent mild side affects. One co worker has developed parkinsons like tremors and another had to start seeing a cardiologist. My best friend, who would have normally not got the jab, did due to medication he is on and his immune system. Joker had a mild heart attack.

 

[killerv]

I don't know that I agree. There are likely a lot of people who were vaxxed and recovered from COVID-19, instead of dying or ending up with long term disabilities. But the fact that the are so many, long-term unknowns, makes it more dicey than officials want to admit.

The messaging and politics has been so bad, in pursuit of this as a magic bullet answer, that it's distorted the conversation.

You shouldn't need the vax if you had COVID-19. The conversation regarding therapeutic treatments should be more open and inquiry-driven, rather than the stupid conversation that's taking place, e.g., FDA marketing department running horse de-wormer warnings about Ivermectin.

tell that to my Dr, I had antibodies and he still wanted me to get vaxxed. He finally told me I was being selfish.

 

[Trauma/ER Murse]

I've been on a mild dose of Lisinopril HCTZ for a few years, for high blood pressure. My blood pressure is pretty consistently around 130/70 on this med. If I take more of it, I get lightheaded, so doc agreed we're good at that level.

This summer, I had a few episodes, working outside in the heat, where I got really lightheaded. Doesn't usually happen to me. Occurred to me that I hadn't taken my blood pressure in a while. Started taking it for a few days, and it was consistently 110/70. While the lower blood pressure is nice, I hated the dizziness that came with it when exerting myself in the yard. I cut my BP med dose in half, and the BP went up about 10 points on top, and has steadied there, and the lightheaded episodes have gone away.

Being 56 years old, family history of high blood pressure, the last thing you expect is blood pressure to go down and stay down. What the hell is this all about? It occurred to me that this started not long after my second Moderna shot. Okay, weird, maybe linked, maybe not.

Just got off the phone with a long time friend, who experienced exactly the same thing. He's a few years older than me, but same meds for high blood pressure. He said his doc was taking him off his BP meds because he was feeling lightheaded and his blood pressure seems to have dropped. I asked if he had been vaccinated and what vaccine he had gotten. The answer: Yes. Moderna.

Some may read this and think, "Great, the vaccines cure high blood pressure." Unfortunately, the answer may be less positive. Low pressure in people who normally have high blood pressure can be a sign of heart damage or other circulatory ailments.

Anyway, interested to hear from anybody who got vaccinated and experienced a sustained drop in blood pressure.

Sounds to me like you developed orthostatic hypotension from hypovolemia. Lisinopril is an ACE inhibitor, but HCTZ is a diuretic and helps lower BP by pulling excess fluids (water) out of your blood stream. If you were outside in the heat, chances are you just became dehydrated due to sweating, on top of a diuretic, causing your BP to drop. About 90% of the people that come into the ER for low BP/ dizziness are just dehydrated, and after a 1-2 liter bolus of NS they are good to go. My advice would to be to drink lots of Gatoraid, preferably the sugar free stuff, till you get tired of bathroom trips to resolve possible dehydration issues. Water is fine, but if you have dehydrated yourself you very possibly have an electrolyte imbalance and those will need to be replenished. ( low K+ will cause cardiac arrihythmias, as will excessive K+)

I would be very careful self adjusting meds without consulting with your doctor first, and if you feel that you potentially have developed cardiac issues then see a cardiologist. If I had $5 for every patient that came into my ER for following bed medical advice or self medicating, I could afford every Glock on ODT.

To be clear I'm not advocating for the vaccine, or trying to say it may not be responsible, but any good ER doctor or nurse is going to start with the most obvious possible causes and rule them out first.

 

[Trauma/ER Murse]

Yep, my wife works in the hospital. She keeps telling me and my boys that we better not hurt ourselves doing anything stupid. Because if we aren't bleeding to death or about to die, we aren't getting a room. Insane wait times in the ER due to staffing shortages. Self imposed shortages I might add...

Could you explain the " self imposed shortages" thing, I'm not sure I understand that. How are staffing shortages "self imposed"?

So is your wife a nurse or other clinical, or is she in an administrative position?

 

[Trailrider]

Could you explain the " self imposed shortages" thing, I'm not sure I understand that. How are staffing shortages "self imposed"?

So is your wife a nurse or other clinical, or is she in an administrative position?

Self imposed by the hospitals is what I meant. Mainly the hospitals coming Covid Vaccine mandates, a lot of medical staff, especially nurses and techs, are quitting. Also, there are plenty of staff out sick as well with Covid. People are leaving, while they try to hire contract nurses for 3-4x the pay with bonuses to come replace them.

She's an NP.

 

[Trauma/ER Murse]

Self imposed by the hospitals is what I meant. Mainly the hospitals coming Covid Vaccine mandates, a lot of medical staff, especially nurses and techs, are quitting. Also, there are plenty of staff out sick as well with Covid. People are leaving, while they try to hire contract nurses for 3-4x the pay with bonuses to come replace them.

She's an NP.

I agree that the mandates are BS, but I also realize that there is millions in federal funding on the line, and if hospitals do not "tow the line" that the government has probably threatened to cut of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, which comprise anywhere from 40%-70% of a hospitals income. No one I know is willing to take a 40% - 70% pay cut.

I'm fairly sure that the hospital is using federal money to pay my huge sign on bonus and my "critical" pay, and that is probably how they can pay for the outrageously expensive agency nurses. The hospitals are being blackmailed, or bribed (depending on perspective) to mandate the vaccine.

 

[rbstern]

Sounds to me like you developed orthostatic hypotension from hypovolemia. Lisinopril is an ACE inhibitor, but HCTZ is a diuretic and helps lower BP by pulling excess fluids (water) out of your blood stream. If you were outside in the heat, chances are you just became dehydrated due to sweating, on top of a diuretic, causing your BP to drop. About 90% of the people that come into the ER for low BP/ dizziness are just dehydrated, and after a 1-2 liter bolus of NS they are good to go. My advice would to be to drink lots of Gatoraid, preferably the sugar free stuff, till you get tired of bathroom trips to resolve possible dehydration issues. Water is fine, but if you have dehydrated yourself you very possibly have an electrolyte imbalance and those will need to be replenished. ( low K+ will cause cardiac arrihythmias, as will excessive K+)

I would be very careful self adjusting meds without consulting with your doctor first, and if you feel that you potentially have developed cardiac issues then see a cardiologist. If I had $5 for every patient that came into my ER for following bed medical advice or self medicating, I could afford every Glock on ODT.

To be clear I'm not advocating for the vaccine, or trying to say it may not be responsible, but any good ER doctor or nurse is going to start with the most obvious possible causes and rule them out first.

Thanks for the thorough comment.

I think your analysis of immediate cause is correct, but I wasn't doing anything different than I had done many times before over the previous couple of years, including during extreme heat and profuse sweating. I'm pretty resistant to dehydration. Rarely have water with me when working outside. Never felt the need. Of course, it may just be age creeping up on me, as it was with the blood pressure.

The delta (no pun intended) this time was having just gotten Moderna shot #2. And having a long-time friend with the same scenario is a strange data point. Wasn't even comparing notes. Just came up in conversation.

As for self-adusting meds: When I first started on BP meds, the doc and I had a convo about 20mg of Lisinopril HCTZ vs. 40mg, and she left it to me to chose based on light-headedness, because when she first put me at 40mg (a couple of years ago), I was lightheaded a lot. She was fine with me at 20mg because my BP stabilized at a reasonable level at that dose. I cut myself to 10mg/day for a few weeks when I realized my systoic was consistently 20 point lower than my "medicated normal," and I was getting lighteaded far more often than I am used to. I'm back at 20mg/day now that it's gone back into a roughly normal (for me) range. The lightheadedness is gone.

 

[Trailrider]

I agree that the mandates are BS, but I also realize that there is millions in federal funding on the line, and if hospitals do not "tow the line" that the government has probably threatened to cut of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, which comprise anywhere from 40%-70% of a hospitals income. No one I know is willing to take a 40% - 70% pay cut.

I'm fairly sure that the hospital is using federal money to pay my huge sign on bonus and my "critical" pay, and that is probably how they can pay for the outrageously expensive agency nurses. The hospitals are being blackmailed, or bribed (depending on perspective) to mandate the vaccine.

Yeah I agree with that 100%. It frustrates her because she works for a specialty practice, but sees patients for them in office as well as the hospitals in town. She's mentioned a few times how she could quit her NP job, sign a contract with the hospital as an RN, and make twice as much money with the huge bonuses. But at the same time, the hospital isn't paying huge bonuses to keep existing staff from jumping ship. She showed me a job posting yesterday for an 8 week contract RN position that was $40k.

 

[rbstern]

I agree that the mandates are BS, but I also realize that there is millions in federal funding on the line, and if hospitals do not "tow the line" that the government has probably threatened to cut of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, which comprise anywhere from 40%-70% of a hospitals income. No one I know is willing to take a 40% - 70% pay cut.

I'm fairly sure that the hospital is using federal money to pay my huge sign on bonus and my "critical" pay, and that is probably how they can pay for the outrageously expensive agency nurses. The hospitals are being blackmailed, or bribed (depending on perspective) to mandate the vaccine.

Billion, rather than millions.

Same thing happened during the economic crisis in 2008, relative to banks. Federal banking regulators rattled the cages of otherwise conservative banks, which hadn't made a practice of foolish loans: The feds want those banks to loosen credit standards: "Lend more money to less credit-worthy people, or we'll start tightening your ratios so you can't borrow as much from the federal reserve." Truly, hair of the dog that bit me.

We've ceded way too much authority to the federal government, and it's now looming over us in most of the meaningful decisions in our lives.

It's antithetical to the founding principles of the Republic and the Constitution.

 

[Jeddak]

I agree that the mandates are BS, but I also realize that there is millions in federal funding on the line, and if hospitals do not "tow the line" that the government has probably threatened to cut of Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements, which comprise anywhere from 40%-70% of a hospitals income. No one I know is willing to take a 40% - 70% pay cut.

I'm fairly sure that the hospital is using federal money to pay my huge sign on bonus and my "critical" pay, and that is probably how they can pay for the outrageously expensive agency nurses. The hospitals are being blackmailed, or bribed (depending on perspective) to mandate the vaccine.

I understand how Feds are beating hospitals into submussion. What will happen if there is not enough contract stuff to replace those who are fired because of their refusal to take the vax?