My experience with blood pressure and medication has been a freak show. When I was previously on hemodialysis a year ago, my blood pressure would drop during the session, and often it would be too low when I was done (<100 systolic). I would feel lightheaded and the nurses wouldn’t let me leave in case I fainted and crashed my car.
Fast forward to heart surgery. When I got back on hemodialysis, the blood pressure was still low-ish, but quickly increased until I was hitting 180/100 consistently. We started adding medication from just Metoprolol to including Benicar (Olmesartan) and NIFEdipine, both 30 mg ER and 10 mg capsules. Post a-fib and ablation, my blood pressure was still high so last week, the rounding nephrologist told me to start taking the 30 mg ER NIFEdipine again. For the next few sessions, my blood pressure has been low when I walked in, typically in the 100/60 range. This would increase some but limits the amount of fluid that can be removed during the session. So now, I have to skip the evening NIFEdipine before dialysis (M/W/F), while keeping the 10 mg capsules for emergencies. Confusing…
I also got my dialysis dry weight dropped by another 0.5 kg to 88.0 kg. My ankles are still pretty swollen from edema so maybe this will also help drop my blood pressure further.
Life with chronic diseases 