Well, bad news, and more bad news.
I went back to the doctors to see how I was doing. This was 4 months of exercise, a major change of diet, some weight loss, and 6 weeks of medication. And the result is … nothing. My blood pressure is exactly where it was before. Absolutely no change. Still far too high. Worse, I’ve been putting up with a medley of unpleasant drug-induced side-effects for the last 6 weeks too. All for nothing.
So now we (!) apparently switch to another set of drugs to see if they work better. Oh good – trial and error. Marvellous. And these ones require that the dose be increased incrementally, until either they work, or my liver and kidneys start to suffer. To make sure that doesn’t happen they need me to take regular blood tests every couple of weeks. It just gets better and better!
I’m starting to realise that medicine involves a lot less science than I ever imagined …