Laura Peterson

Feel Like Yourself Again

I took my own blood pressure at the front of the Walmart in Slidell, Louisiana, last month while I was waiting for my husband to come out of the pharmacy, and the number that popped up scared me so bad I didn't tell him. 172 over 104. I sat there in that little chair with the cuff still on my arm and I stared at the screen and I thought, that has to be wrong. So I did it again. 174 over 106. I did it a third time. 168 over 103. I unwrapped the cuff and I stood up and I walked over to the bench outside the pharmacy and I sat down and I folded my hands in my lap like I was in church, and by the time Nate came out with his prescription for his blood thinner and his little bag of receipts, I had my face fixed and I said, hey baby, ready to go, and I walked out to the truck like nothing had happened. I didn't tell him. I want to say that clearly because that is a thing I did and I have to live with it. I did not tell my husband of 41 years that his wife had just registered a blood pressure of 174 over 106 in a Walmart parking lot. I made a decision in that little chair. I decided I was going to figure it out on my own. My name is Delphine. I'm 63 years old. I live on Fremaux Avenue in Slidell, Louisiana, about 30 minutes from New Orleans on a good traffic day and an hour and a half on a bad one. I coordinate the quilting ministry at Our Lady of Lourdes and I have for 17 years. Every Tuesday night we meet in the parish hall and 14 women my age make quilts for the NICU up at Ochsner and for the homeless shelter over in Covington. We've made 900 something in my time running it. I keep a spreadsheet. Nate is 66. He worked for Entergy for 38 years running lines and reading meters and he's been retired for four. He had a small heart attack in 2019 that scared us both, and since then he's been on a blood thinner and a statin and a blood pressure pill and he takes them like clockwork every morning at 7:15 with a glass of orange juice and I have never once had to remind him. He is the healthy one. That's what I told myself. I told myself Nate is the one we watch. I take him to his cardiologist appointments every 6 months. I sit in the waiting room and I bring my crocheting. I know his numbers better than my own. I do not know my own. I haven't had my blood pressure checked at a doctor's office in maybe 4 years. Maybe 5. I don't like the doctor. I never have. My mother didn't either and she raised me to only go when something was broken. I've been telling myself for years that I feel fine and if I feel fine I don't need to sit in a waiting room to be told I'm fine. I feel fine. That's what I kept saying to myself the whole ride home from Walmart that day. I feel fine. Whatever that machine said, I feel fine. Nate is the one with the heart. I'm the one who runs the quilting circle. I'm the one who makes his lunches and pays the bills and drives him to Ochsner every 6 months. I am not the one this happens to. I feel fine. I went to bed that night and I laid there in the dark and I could hear my own heartbeat in my ear where my head touched the pillow. Thump. Thump. Thump. I don't know if I'd ever heard it that loud before or if I'd just never been listening. I turned onto my other side. I could hear it just as loud. I stayed awake until 3 something in the morning listening to my own heart pound and thinking about what would happen to Nate if he woke up next to me and I was already gone. He would fall apart. That is the truth. Nate has been the strong one on paper for four years, but Nate cannot pour his own coffee without a wife in the kitchen. Nate cannot find the checkbook. Nate cannot work the microwave. Nate cannot remember which pill is which without me setting them out in the little plastic weekday sorter I fill up on Sunday nights. If Nate lost me, he would follow within a year. I know this the way you know things about a man you have loved since you were 22 years old. That was the thought that broke me. Not the number on the machine. The picture of Nate standing in the kitchen in the morning trying to figure out how to make coffee for one. I got up at 4 in the morning and I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of decaf and I made myself a promise. I said, Delphine, you are going to do something about this. You are not going to be the woman who dropped dead in her sleep because she was too proud to admit her blood pressure was 174 over 106. You are going to fix this and you are going to do it quiet because your husband does not need one more thing to worry about. I did not know how yet. But I promised myself. Two weeks went by. I bought one of those little wrist cuffs at Walgreens on my way home from the Piggly Wiggly. I paid cash so it wouldn't show up on our card and I hid it in the back of my nightstand drawer under a rosary and a stack of receipts. I took my blood pressure twice a day when Nate was in the yard. It stayed in the 160s and 170s. Once it hit 181. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at that number for a long time. I tried the things you're supposed to try. I cut back on the salt. I cut out sweet tea entirely, which nearly killed me on its own. I started walking around the block in the mornings before Nate got up. I ate a banana every day for the potassium because my sister-in-law told me you're supposed to. I took an aspirin. I drank more water. Two weeks in, my numbers were exactly the same. I was standing in the Walmart parking lot again on a Saturday afternoon in June, waiting for Nate to come out with a bag of birdseed and a light bulb, when Yvette pulled up next to me. Yvette used to live three doors down from us on Fremaux from 1998 to 2011. She moved to Mandeville after her husband Roger retired from the sheriff's department. I hadn't seen her in maybe 4 years. Maybe 5. Life gets busy. She parked next to me and she got out of her car and she looked at me and she said, Delphine? Is that you? I said Yvette, oh my Lord. We stood in that parking lot and we hugged and we caught up for a half hour on everything. Then somewhere in the middle of it she said something. She said, Roger had a scare last year. His pressure went up on him out of nowhere. He was on three pills and it still wasn't touching it. I froze. I didn't say anything at first. I just looked at her. She kept talking. She said the cardiologist wanted to add a fourth pill. Roger was starting to have side effects from the ones he was already on. He was tired all the time. He was dizzy when he stood up. His ankles were swelling. He was 68 years old and he told Yvette he felt like the medicine was killing him faster than the pressure would have. She said, and Delphine, I did not know what to do. So I did something I usually don't do. I asked my daughter in law's mama. Yvette's daughter in law was Indian. Her mother had come over from India in the 1970s and had lived in Baton Rouge ever since. Yvette said she'd always been polite with the woman but hadn't ever really talked to her one on one. But she was desperate. And her daughter in law had mentioned once, casually, that her mother knew a lot about traditional Indian medicine. Yvette drove to Baton Rouge on a Thursday. She sat with the woman at her kitchen table for two hours. And what the woman told her changed everything for Roger. I said Yvette, tell me. She did. She said the woman explained it like this. She said Roger's blood pressure wasn't going to come down on the pills alone because the pills weren't fixing the thing that was broken. The pills were forcing his vessels to open. But the reason they weren't opening on their own in the first place was because the inside of the vessel wall was worn out. She said inside every blood vessel there is a living wall. A thin lining that runs the whole length of you. When that wall is healthy it makes a molecule called nitric oxide, and nitric oxide is what tells the vessel to relax. When you're young, that wall pumps out nitric oxide all day long and your vessels stay relaxed and your pressure stays where it's supposed to. But over the years, with the processed food and the stress and the inflammation and the pollution and all of it, that wall gets worn down. It stops making as much nitric oxide. The vessels stay tight. Blood forces its way through. That's high blood pressure. And the harder the blood pushes, the more it stresses the wall. Which makes the wall worse. Which makes the vessels tighter. Which makes the pressure higher. She said, Delphine, it's a cycle. It's a cycle that feeds itself. And every year it gets a little worse. She said pills don't fix that wall. Pills force the vessels open while the wall keeps deteriorating underneath. The pill is a hand pulling the door open. The wall is the hinges. Nobody is fixing the hinges. Beetroot doesn't fix it either. She said the woman told her beetroot adds nitric oxide from the outside, like buying a bag of ice from the store. But your body already makes its own. The problem was never that you don't have any. The problem is that the wall got too worn out to make what you need. You don't need imported ice. You need to fix the icemaker. I stood in that Walmart parking lot with my mouth slightly open. Yvette said, garlic doesn't do it. Magnesium doesn't do it. Fish oil doesn't do it. None of the usual things you hear about actually support the wall itself. They support other things. But not the wall. She said the woman told her about a fruit called amla. Indian gooseberry. In Ayurvedic tradition they call it the nurse because of what it supports in the body. She said amla contains compounds called emblicanins, which is a mouthful but it's what she wrote down for Yvette on a piece of paper. And what the emblicanins do, she said, is help support that inner wall. When the wall gets support, it can start doing what it was made to do. It can start producing more of its own nitric oxide again. The way it did when you were younger. She said, and when the wall is making its own nitric oxide again, the vessels can relax more naturally. Blood can flow more easily. The pressure on the walls can start to ease. She said, and when the pressure eases, the wall isn't under the same constant beating. Which means the wall gets a chance to keep supporting itself. Which means the cycle can start to break. She said, Delphine, that's the whole thing. That's the whole picture. The pressure doesn't come down because something is forcing it down. It comes down because your body is finally doing what it already knew how to do. It just needed the wall supported first. I said Yvette. Yvette said, Roger's been on it since October. His cardiologist took him off two of the three pills. His pressure is 128 over 78 last visit. He hasn't had a dizzy spell in 5 months. His ankles came down. He's walking Bella around the block twice a day. He hasn't done that in 6 years. She said, the cardiologist doesn't know what to make of it. Roger hasn't told him about the amla. Yvette said Roger's afraid the doctor will tell him to stop. I said, what's the brand. Yvette said, Auniva. She said the website. I made her say it twice so I could memorize it in the parking lot. She said, get the one that's standardized. There's a lot of amla out there that's just powder. This one is the extract, standardized, real emblicanins. She said the woman in Baton Rouge had specifically told her which brand to trust and this was the one. Nate came out of the Walmart with his birdseed and his light bulb. Yvette hugged me. She said, Delphine, don't wait. Don't be like Roger and get talked into a fourth pill first. She squeezed my hand. She got in her car and she drove off. I got in the truck. Nate said, who was that? I said, that was Yvette. He said, oh how is she? I said, she's fine baby. She's real good. I ordered two bottles that night at the kitchen table after Nate went to bed. I used my own debit card. I told the delivery driver to leave it on the side porch not the front. I did not want Nate seeing a package he didn't know about. It came four days later in a small brown box. I brought it inside while Nate was in the yard and I put it in my nightstand drawer next to the wrist cuff and the rosary. I took my first two capsules that Tuesday morning with my coffee. I want to tell you the truth about the first two weeks. My numbers did not budge. I took my pressure twice a day. It stayed in the 160s and 170s. Once it dropped to 158. I was excited for about an hour. Then it went back up. I almost gave up around day 11. I sat on the edge of the bed and I thought, this is not going to work. I am going to have to break down and go to a doctor. But something in me said, give it 90 days. Yvette said Roger took a few weeks to feel anything. The woman in Baton Rouge had told her the wall doesn't heal in a week. It's a wall that took 40 years to wear down. Give it a real chance. I kept taking them. Day 18 my morning number was 154 over 96. I stared at that reading for a full minute. I did it again. 152 over 94. I sat on the edge of the bed and I felt something loosen in my chest. Not physically. Emotionally. Like something I hadn't known I was holding had let go. Week 4 my morning numbers were consistently in the 140s. Week 5 I had a morning read of 138 over 84 and I called my sister Iris in Baton Rouge crying. I hadn't told anyone. Iris said, Delphine, what are you talking about, what pressure, what are you saying. I told her the whole story. I told her about the Walmart machine and Yvette and the woman in Baton Rouge and the amla and the wall. Iris said, girl, why didn't you call me sooner. I said, because I was scared. I said, because I promised myself I'd fix it quiet. I said, because Nate cannot handle one more thing. Iris said, you tell that man. You tell that man tonight. He's your husband, Delphine. Don't do him like that. Let him love you through it. I hung up with Iris and I sat at the kitchen table for a while and I thought about it. I told Nate that night after dinner. I told him everything. The Walmart machine. The 174 over 106. The wrist cuff in the drawer. The parking lot with Yvette. The amla. The mornings when I couldn't sleep because I could hear my heart beating in the pillow. I told him about the picture of him standing in the kitchen trying to make coffee for one. Nate did not say anything for a long time. Then he got up from his chair. He walked around to my side of the table. He knelt down on the linoleum next to me on his 66 year old knees, which he never does, and he put his forehead against my hand. He said, Delphine. He said, don't you ever do that again. He said, don't you ever carry something like that alone. I sat there and I cried and he stayed there on the floor with his forehead against my hand for a good long while. By week 6 my morning pressure was consistently in the low 130s. By week 8 it was in the 120s. I took my last read this morning before I sat down to write this. It was 122 over 76. I could not have made that number up if I tried. Nate takes it too now. He asked to. He said if this thing was helping his wife's wall then he wanted his wall helped too. He's still on his cardiologist's medicine because he had a heart attack and neither of us is going to mess with that regimen without a professional in the room. But he takes the amla every morning with his other pills. His last pressure at the cardiologist was the best it's been since 2019. His cardiologist asked us what we were doing different. Nate looked at me. I looked at Nate. Nate said, well, my wife's been feeding me better. The cardiologist chuckled and made a note and moved on. I still take my pressure every morning. Not because I'm scared anymore. Because I like seeing the number. It's a little proof every day that my body is doing what it was made to do. That my wall is holding. That the icemaker is running again. Quilting circle knows nothing about any of it. I go every Tuesday and I run the meeting and I pass out the batting and I take home the finished quilts to fold. Only one person from that circle knows, and that's Nadine who I told last week because she'd been telling me her own numbers had been creeping up and I wanted her to have the same chance Yvette gave me. Nadine ordered a bottle that night. That's how these things happen. One woman tells another woman across a parking lot or a fabric table. Some knowledge just gets passed the old way. If you're a woman my age and your pressure has been climbing, and you've been telling yourself you'll get around to it, and you've been lying to your husband or your sister or yourself, I want you to stop lying. Get yourself a wrist cuff at Walgreens. Take a real number. If it scares you, do what I did. Do something about it quietly if you have to, but do something. Auniva has a 90 day money back guarantee. If you take it for 90 days and your numbers don't budge, you send the bottles back and they give you every penny. That's a fair offer. That's more than any pill I ever paid for came with. That's a company saying they know what their product does. You do not have to be brave enough to go to a doctor today. You just have to be brave enough to order the bottles. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33 P.S. I saw Yvette last week at the Winn Dixie in Mandeville. I drove out to meet her on purpose. I brought her a quilt from our ministry, a little baby-sized one in yellows and greens. I told her it was for her granddaughter but really it was because I did not know how else to say thank you. She held that quilt in the parking lot and she cried a little and she said, Delphine, all I did was tell you what somebody told me. I said, Yvette, that's how the good things move through the world. She's coming to quilting circle next month as a guest. I want her to see what her Thursday afternoon in Baton Rouge grew into. P.P.S. Nate keeps a bottle of the amla on his side of the medicine cabinet now, right next to his blood thinner and his statin. He calls it his little Indian nurse. I told him that was actually what they call it in the Ayurvedic tradition and he looked at me and he said, well I'll be. He was proud he'd gotten it right. He'd never heard of Ayurvedic anything. Now he tells the men at the coffee shop about it. He's a walking billboard. I let him. It's his way of loving me back. P.P.P.S. If you have a husband who cannot make coffee for one, tell him what's going on. Don't do what I did. Don't decide you can carry it alone. I almost did and I almost paid for it. The 41 years we've had together are 41 years because we told each other the truth. I broke that rule for two weeks and it nearly cost us everything. Don't break it. Tell him. Then order the bottles. Together. P.P.P.P.S. Auniva has that 90 day money back guarantee. I want to hammer that one more time. There is nothing to lose. There is a whole marriage to save. There is a whole life to keep. You do not need to be sure. You do not need a doctor's permission. You just need to click the link and try it for 90 days. What Roger got back. What I got back. That is what is waiting on the other side of an order button that takes less than four minutes. 👉 auniva.co/amla/33