How's your Blood Pressure?

Macy (my 10 year old) will be happy to check it for you. :-D


She has been "studying" medical issues for as long as she has been able to read and has developed a keen admiration for Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor. She emails my oldest sister (who is a nurse) all the time with all sorts of questions and observations about her studies, and Vick is always very patient to respond very thoroughly and with great encouragement. This year for Christmas, she brought Macy a blood pressure cuff and stethoscope and taught her how to check blood pressure.


With that in mind, I wonder if you can guess Macy's topic for her upcoming health fair. ;-)


She is tracking her sister and 2 of her cousins for 5 days. Her plan is to take their BP 3 times each day--once under "normal" circumstances, once after a "stressful" activity, and once after she has relaxed them with spa treatments/massages. It's a pretty impressive and well-thought-out experiment, and so far the results are proving her hypothesis (that BP rises with stress and lowers with relaxation), but I never expected the process to be so entertaining (at least for me).


The "stressful" activities are particularly funny. Grace decided that one of the things that stresses her out is when her room is a mess, so Macy made a bit of a mess in there and then followed her around while she cleaned it up, undoing her progress as she went. So for instance, there was a pencil holder dumped over on the floor. Grace picked it all up, and then Macy knocked it over again. And on and on. Of course, Grace was in on the plan, so she knew why Macy was doing it, but she was OVER IT pretty quickly. (I'm pretty sure I heard Grace growl a few times.) And sure enough, her blood pressure was up by about 7 points when Macy checked it against her normal. I couldn't help but chuckle. . .


Funny little munchkins.