I hadn't checked my blood pressure in weeks although I am supposed to often and have a battery-powered home machine just like an old man. I had assumed that my dizziness, not dizziness, actually but dimness, was due to the anemia that I've been wrestling. Lately I've been feeling as if the blood was only arriving 3/4 up my brain and that was leaving me foggy and unfocused. When i checked the blood pressure cuff (here at my computer, I pull a lever and my Aeron chair descends with a whoosh and I prop my arm on my desk so it will be on the same level as my heart). The machine said 80/50. Normal is 120/80. The good news was that my fragile kidneys love low blood pressure (that's why I gobble three different blood-pressure lowering medicines a day). The better news was that I could have something salty for once. it's been eight years since I've been on a salt-restricted diet. At brunch I was hoping for a salty chicken soup or chicken pot pie, two of my favorites, but they weren't on the menu. Then Nora, my lovely former nanny, who was in town with Sean, the love of her life, ordered a bloody Mary. That's it! Tomato juice is laden with salt. I ordered one myself and felt as wicked as a heroin addict. I hadn't tasted one in about a decade.

Later that night I checked my blood pressure again. 140/70. Terribly, dangerously high. I'd taken all the bp meds I as allowed for the day. I went to sleep vowing to meditate again. I consider myself a Zen Buddhist but since the kids have been born my meditation has been spotty at best. This morning I checked it again: 138/74. Awful. That meant that all night long my poor kidneys were being firehosed from within. But a new day means more meds and an hour later I was down to 112/71.

Tomorrow I get an EKG and a stress test. My last hurdle before qualifying for the transplant list.