Musings of a Dinosaur

A Family Doctor in solo private practice; I may be going the way of the dinosaur, but I'm not dead yet.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Another "Oh Yeah" Moment

There's a nearby school district having parent-teacher conferences today and tomorrow, meaning the students are off. This means I saw six kids for physicals today with more scheduled for tomorrow.

Scenario: Perfectly healthy 14 year-old boy, tired because he was awake all night at a friend's house ("sleepover" is such a misnomer) has a blood pressure of 120/100 (120/90 on repeat) with both a regular and large adult BP cuff.

WTF?

How much soda (caffeine) do you drink?
  • Very little.
Any tobacco, alcohol, drugs?
  • No.
What did you have to eat last night?
  • Cheese, peanut butter crackers, cheerios.
Any caffeinated soda?
  • No.
Mountain Dew?
  • No.
Do you have a cold? Any cold medicines?
  • No.
Normal weight/BMI. Nothing to explain his BP. Yes, there's a family history of hypertension, so I call in the mom and we start talking about re-checking it in a month or so.

Suddenly the kid says,
Oh yeah! I had an energy drink.
Cool. At least he remembered it while he was still in the office. Most of the time it's a call back several days later. We'll still re-check the BP, but at least mine went back down.

6 Comments:

At Tue Oct 23, 11:56:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

What's normal for a kid that age/size?

(Speaking of BP, I had my lowest recorded score ever today -- 110/60. Woohoo! I think I have reverse white coat syndrome. :) )

 
At Wed Oct 24, 03:25:00 AM, Blogger Sara said...

Holy crap! What are kids that age doing drinking that crap? That's worse than alcohol...

 
At Wed Oct 24, 08:19:00 AM, Blogger tk said...

Aren't there warnings on the labels of those drinks?

 
At Wed Oct 24, 09:04:00 AM, Blogger MedStudentGod (MSG) said...

Energy drinks really need to have a label warning about the side effects. There's so much that goes on with those kinds of things and not a great deal of regulation. It's quite scary, really.

Great job with the cold question, I always, always, always forget to ask that with an elevated BP.

 
At Wed Oct 24, 11:33:00 AM, Blogger Dreaming again said...

trying to convince my 18 year old that caffiene has something to do with his 144/89 is like pulling teeth ....

 
At Wed Oct 24, 01:41:00 PM, Blogger mark's tails said...

WTF indeed! Isn't it time parents started to be parents again?

 

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