09/02/2026
I’ll never forget the day I lost my vision.
After I delivered my daughter, I was walking around my bedroom when, all of a sudden, I couldn’t see anything to my left or right. All I could see was black.
The vision loss kept spreading until all I could see was what was directly in front of me.
I was scared.
Within what was probably minutes, but felt like an eternity, my vision returned.
I checked my blood pressure (BP).
It was in the 150s or 160s at the top. I don’t remember the exact number anymore.
What I remember is starting BP meds that day.
Until then, I had been trying to regulate my BP on my own. I was afraid to start medication because my doctor told me I would be on it for the rest of my life.
I was checking my BP every day, but I wasn’t acting like I was seeing what I was seeing: numbers that were higher than my norm; numbers that were telling me I needed help bringing my BP down.
It wasn’t until I lost my vision that I truly saw what those numbers were trying to tell me.
That experience changed the way I monitor women today.
I’m not just asking women to take their blood pressure.
I’m asking them to act on what they see even when they are afraid, and, when possible, for them to be proactive so they never have to see what I saw.
For the next two weeks—and almost every day since—I took my blood pressure.
For the next few months, I researched blood pressure, vision, preeclampsia, the short- and long-term consequences of having high BP during and after pregnancy, ways to manage BP, self-monitoring, behavior change, and what we can learn from populations who experience less chronic disease.
People sometimes ask me:
“How do you take your blood pressure every day?”
My answer comes easily now.
It’s not because it takes less time than brushing my teeth. It’s not because I feel obligated since I ask others to do it. It’s not because I expect it to be elevated—or because I need reassurance that it’s controlled.
It’s because I know that if I catch an elevation early, I have an opportunity to act.
So I’ll be talking tomorrow night about the relationship between high BP, vision changes, and kidney damage, and the power you have to act now to avoid issues later 💞
