I'm a 47 year old hypertensive male. Quick hypertension history:
25-35 years old: normal/high blood pressure, 135/85
36 years old: 140/90, official hypertensive diagnosis
36-43 years old: many meds tried, no medicine significantly brought down blood pressure, but gave bad side effects.
44 years old: lost weight, from 230 to 205 pounds, blood pressure dropped to 135/85, stopped taking meds
I now weigh 195 pounds and until recently my blood pressure has been in the 130/80 range and I've felt great. I don't smoke, sleep well, eat well, take long walks with my dogs, lift weights, life is great. I have a cup of coffee in the morning and a shot of whiskey and a beer at night, my only vices.
I gave blood at the red cross two months ago, I give every two months. Blood pressure was normal at that time. Then I go to give blood early last week and it was 160/106. Whoa.
Talked to my primary care doc, and the readings were confirmed, but she didn't prescribe anything as I have a shaky history with any med working. She just had me monitor at home. Since then I'm getting readings typically about 177/112, with some readings into the 190/120 range, but some lower around 160/105.
A nurse friend made me go to the ER over the weekend she was so worried when it stayed over 185/115, but since I wasn't having organ failure, they just gave me a single 0.1 mg clonidine and sent me away.
I saw my urologist on Monday for a followup to the kidney stone event I had last year. I had a small stone pass back then and on x-ray they saw a 4 mm stone sitting in my right kidney, so I had a scheduled follow up to check on it.
The stone has moved to my ureter and has gotten stuck, about halfway. I've been feeling significant pain on that side since the end of December, but I had a kidney infection which was treated with ampicillin at that time and thought it was all related to that. Oh, my blood pressure at the end of December was slightly elevated (148/92), probably due to the PSGN (it was strep bacteria in my kidney, which causes elevation).
Now I have a partially, maybe intermittently fully blocked ureter. My right kidney showed mild enlargement, but kidney functions are normal. The urologist prescribed Cardura to help open up the ureter to pass the stone, and it also lowers the blood pressure about 30/20 points for a few hours. Been on it a couple of days now. If in 3 weeks it hasn't passed, they'll remove it surgically.
I'm also getting nausea, palpitations, nervousness, sweats, cold intolerance, racing pulse, irritation, etc., and have been since early January. .
So..... my question is, can a blocked ureter cause a very high spike in hypertension like I'm seeing?
I mean, I've basically gone from normal-high to acute severe hypertension in about 2-3 weeks. Nothing about this seems right and I'm very concerned.