Hypertension kills

It’s a disheartening experience when any of your loved ones get struck down suddenly by such serious illness as hemorrhagic stroke, like what National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) director Reynaldo Wycoco suffered last Wednesday.

This was the same killer illness that snuffed out the life of my father at the prime of his life. He was just 55 years old when he succumbed to hemorrhagic stroke that caused his cerebral aneurysm in December 1986. It is a fatal condition that threatens the life of most of those suffering from hypertension.

He was early as usual in coming to his office when my father felt so dizzy and passed out on the couch. His officemates, who knew he was hypertensive, rushed him to the nearest hospital where doctors administered emergency treatment to him. But later that night, his doctors frankly told my mother the results of the brain scan showed my daddy was already brain-dead. A big vein in his brain ruptured but he was still much alive because his heart was strong.

However, his doctor calmly impressed upon my mother that she must accept the sad reality she had virtually lost her husband and that the only thing that keeps him alive was the life-support attached to him at the intensive care unit.

Hypertension runs in the blood of my family. Like my father and grandfather, I too am hypertensive. Yes, I had hypertension even in my young age, pardon me if I insist I’m still young, just to stress a point that this kind of illness does not recognize age. Whether a person is young or old, hypertension afflicts anyone who has it in his/her genes and it comes out due to certain conditions that trigger it.

In my case, hypertension was pregnancy-induced, when I was on the last month of my pregnancy, with my twin sons in 1989. I was 28 years old at that time. I was during the last three weeks of my pregnancy when my blood pressure (BP) shoot up at very dangerous levels (as high as 150 over 100.)

My hypertension recurred 10 years later. This time, it was triggered by stress and fatigue at work. At the end of one of the busy days of my coverage at Malacañang Palace, I suddenly had numbness in my hands and extreme case of headache and dizziness. I proceeded straight to the emergency room of the first hospital we saw on the road. The doctor on duty immediately gave me Calcibloc that I was advised to melt under my tongue.

This life-threatening experience was a reality check that made me re-think my work pace and change my food intake. As the usual advice of doctors for their hypertensive patients, I had to take low salt, low fat diet, and to stay away as much as possible from stressful situations. Despite heeding them, my BP still went on a roller-coaster.

During my daily Palace coverage, I felt the same severe symptoms and regularly went to Malacañang Clinic, headed by director Dr. Rolando Deduyo whose fatherly attention somehow helped lower my BP. Since my work involves a lot of scoop stress and deadline pressure, not to mention fatigue in going to many places here and abroad, Dr. Deduyo told me I should take maintenance medicine to check my roller-coaster BP. For the past two years now, I have been taking 5 mg of Norvasc after breakfast.

During the last medical check-up I had with Dr. Deduyo, he added to my daily medicine 5 mg of Lipitor taken after dinner. This was after blood examinations showed my bad cholesterol (triglyceride) a little above the normal level at my age. Bad cholesterol are the ones that clog the veins and prevent free flow of blood that distributes oxygen to our body system up to the brain.

Being a conservative physician, Dr. Deduyo prefers the more natural way of removing unwanted body toxins and harmful chemicals by eating more vegetables and fruits that have high natural anti-oxidant qualities.

Maintenance medicines for this kind of illness are no cure-all, nor can it totally prevent the aftermath of sudden surges of BP as what hit Wycoco who has been taking preventive drugs while at the same time keeping physically fit, and I suppose observes healthy living.

Manila Doctors Hospital (MDH) medical director, cardiologist Dr. Dante Morales, who is supervising the team of physicians attending to Wycoco, described the condition of his patient as having suffered this illness caused by ruptured aneurysm in the brain.

Dr. Deduyo and his wife, who is also a cardiologist, along with Dr. Morales recently participated in the annual Convention of American Heart Doctors held in Dallas, Texas where they updated their specializations on the modern medicines and advances in medical techniques.

Like his famous daughter, Vicky Morales, TV news anchor of Channel 7, Dr. Morales was very clear and forthright in his prognosis about the condition of his patient during the hastily organized press conference a few hours after successfully resuscitating Wycoco.

In the specific case of Wycoco, Dr. Morales attributed the aneurysm of the NBI chief as a congenital one, or it’s been with him since birth. As explicitly explained by Dr. Morales, congenital aneurysm is a condition where the thin layers of veins in the brain got bloated due to high blood pressure that caused these veins to burst.

So even if this person afflicted with congenital aneurysm like Wycoco is health conscious, Dr. Morales cited, he or she remains a candidate for hemorrhagic stroke and its likelihood is high among those who do not maintain healthy lifestyle.

As of yesterday, the MDH doctors declared they remain "grim but hopeful" on the chances of recovery for Wycoco in their latest medical bulletin even as a team of neuro-surgeons conduct further scanning to determine if there is still any discernible brain activity.

This was the same medical condition when the late actor Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) succumbed in December last year to aneurysm. FPJ was clinically brain dead even while at the ICU until his strong heart, like my late father, finally gave in.

All that is left now is the power of prayer for the family and relatives as well as friends and other well-wishers for a miracle to happen to Wycoco. There have been medical precedents here and abroad of patients coming out of comatose while under life support system. God works in mysterious ways. Amen.

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