Mellie310

I'm new to this forum, and I promise to try and keep this as short as possible, but please forgive me if I don't. A year ago last May, I went to my Dr. and had a blood pressure reading of 132/80. 3 weeks later, I was sick, took 3 days off from work, I hadn't worked for over a year due to my Father's traumatic death. So, while I was working, I drastically cut down on caffeine and nicotine. When I got sick and stayed home those 3 days, I drank bottle after bottle of Pepsi, and chain smoked. I took my blood pressure one evening, and to my horror it was 181/86. I have panic/anxiety disorders, so seeing that high reading threw me into panic. My husband took me to the ER, and the dr. there told me that he thought it had spiked because I had "re-introduced" caffeine and nicotine into my system, which made sense to me. The dr. at the hospital gave me a very mild anti-hypertensive drug, can't remember the name, and when I left the hospital, it was 124/56. He said that the bottom number was way too low, and he didn't think I had true high blood pressure. I called my own dr. the next morning, and he panicked. He put me on 160 mgs. of lisinopril and 10 mgs. of Norvasc. My b/p dropped as low as 50/32, and that's not a typo!!!!!!!!!!!! This has been almost a year, and my blood pressure has stayed anywhere from the 80's over 40 something to sometimes 90's over 50 something with quite a few episodes of it bottoming out really, really low. I felt horrible. Lately, I have cut one norvasc and am now on 5 mgs. at night. I have had 3 drs. tell me that anything over 80 mgs of lisinopril doesn't have any effect on your blood pressure, also have read that numerous times on the internet. So actually I'm taking 80 mgs of lisinopril and 5 mgs of norvasc. During the past year I had absolutely no trouble at all with anxiety. But about 3 weeks ago, the old disorder kicked in on me again, and I noticed a slight elevation in my b/p. I didn't worry about it though. However, I started chain smoking, got up to over 2 packs per day. B/p went up some more. Last Tuesday though, it bottomed out on me again, 82/44 and I called my dr. and told him I had to get off some of these meds. I never got the chance to do that though, because I decided to cut down on nicotine, and also codeine, of which I was taking about 12 of per day for bad knee pain. I cut the codeine from 12 per day to 6, and cut down on the cigarettes from 2 packs per day to 10. Yesterday my blood pressure rose to 149/71. My husband thought maybe it was withdrawal from nicotine, so he gave me a cigarette, and it lowered it to 128/62. So my question is this............could this spike in my b/p be caused from nicotine, codeine withdrawal, coupled with some pretty bad anxiety? I am sooooooooo sorry for this long post, but I am scared to death. This is NOT normal for me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Melanie