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Spreadsheet help

RogerS

RogerS

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I have been taking blood pressure readings three times a day. The first when I wake up (high BP), the second later in the day after the meds were taken a few hours before (normal BP) and the third set (high BP) just before going to bed.

These readings suggest to this layman that the BP meds are running 'out of puff' by the end of the day and so the BP is not controlled during the night. I'd like to present to my GP a chart like this

Screenshot 2026-02-16 at 09.25.28.png
The circles could be the first set of readings, say, crosses the second and square the third.

Can this sort of thing be done in a spreadsheet ? Ideally Apple Numbers

TIA
 
I don't find Numbers so intuitive as Excel of LibreCalc.

If you send me the figures, I'll give it a go.
 
I'm not sure i understand the readings. Shouldn't you have systolic and diastolic per reading
 
RogerS said:
I'm sure it is, Sam. I just don't know how to :)
Click to expand...
You could go see Malc Roger, or, just put "graphs from excel" as a search string. Gazillions of demos and helpful (for once!) Huge Toob offerings. The sequence, once data is entered, is simple and organically part of excel; it's on the menu bar, top of the screen. Any school child from the last 40 years can do it in their sleep, so if you have a neighbour, with teenage children or young adults, plead mental incontinence (brains leaking away with age) and you will be gleefully instructed, demoed and up to speed in about 5 minutes. No biggie, so don't be embarrassed to ask. I did.

EDIT: You DO need both figures as Planeiron ses above. Two different coloured lines on your graph.
 
Which BP monitor do you have Rog? Mine saves readings then allows them to be exported as a txt file which can easily be converted to an xls
 
Couple of observations.

I take two different BP pills. One is straight BP pill and the other is to help kidney function primarily but also lowers BP so I have one at bedtime and the other in the morning. I think this levels things out a bit.

I check things are ok doing a test around midday ( I sometimes skip a day or two, as I am pretty stable)
I repeat the test at least three times one after the other, I have noticed that the first tends to be significantly different from the others . No idea if it’s me or the machine.
Also the battery condition appears to be significant, although that could be me imagining things.
 
Just a bit of background. I was on just the one BP med - Felodipine but then after routine bloods and urine, my ACR had jumped. Without so much as a by-your-leave and without even seeing or speaking to a GP at the surgery near the house rental (which rather hacked me off as being rather impersonal), I got a peremptory message on the NHS app "I've put you on Ramipril"

Fair enough it brought the BP back under control but gave me the annoying dry cough side-effect (admittedly took me many months to spot the linkage) and so having moved to our new home and a different (and excellent GP surgery), I asked for a different med and got Candesartan - which gave me the s**ts.

Then I noticed the trend in the readings hence seeing the GP this week.

Now here's the thing. The NICE protocol for treating BP says put the patient on another extra drug if the first one doesn't work. But that protocol will have been based on all sorts of clinical trials, metadata, studies etc etc and a one-size fits all approach adopted. But the standard deviation curve says 'what about the outriggers?'. So since Felodipine gave me no side-effects and is a delayed action drug and I'm on only 5mg and 10mg a day is allowed then I'm going to suggest I take two ...one in the morning and the second 12 hours later. Hence trying to make the figures clear for the GP. And get the green light to just have the one type of med.
 
RogerS said:
Just a bit of background. I was on just the one BP med - Felodipine
Click to expand...
I've been on four, inc Felodopine for well over a decade and I rarely worry about my BP. I take the view that if I worry about it, it'll only get worse and my doc isn't overly concerned either. FWIW, it's the second BP reading on the monitor that you need to record, not the first. When he asks me to do a weeks worth of readings, I sit down for brekky, take my meds and do the first reading. I then sit quietly for at least 20mins min reading my Kindle before I take the second bp reading, making sure that the cuff is done up sufficiently to just hold, but isn't tight. Too tight and it will distort the reading.

I'm off to see Dr. James early next month for a routine, not urgent consultation over a recent BP reading submitted by the nursey at my last tick box medical in Jan. I'd just walked briskly from home to the surgery (20mins) and no sooner was I in the waiting room (didn't even have time to open me Kindle) than nursey appeared and whisked me into her office, whereupon she'd taken my BP reading within 30seconds. I told her it would be high (178); she left it for another 20seconds, tried again...160 something. She tried again after another 20 seconds.....154 which is the reading given to Dr. James.

One of the things I want to natter to him about is two new and supposedly very good BP drugs coming on stream in the NHS. I forget the names, but a Google AI question gave me some answers.

In previous years when the reading has been high, the then very nice lady doc (now retired) made me lie down for 5mins between each reading and was happy with the second one - Rob

Edit - 'white coat' syndrome plays a part in BP readings in a surgery, so Dr.James no longer does them during a consultation
 
Sorry to hear of your issues with blood pressure Roger (S)...

BP seems to take us - and some medical professionals - on a merry dance for sure. I've had a few incidents over time. I suffered from dizzy spells when getting up if I'd checked something on a low/bottom shelf when shopping. Had to go back down, wait a few seconds and then straighten up *slowly*. I was put on a BP med - helped but didn't get rid of issue. Did the readings, took the mess... still nearly always high.

Came a time when I'd got a 'men's problem'... had prostate scanned and put on a pill to help that. Still on Losarten for the BP but the medfor the prostate also lowers the BP so took that in the evening before bed - Losarten in the morning. BP went too weird and I'd have the dizzy spell return, especially when getting up in the morning. They stopped the Losarten. Next checks... high BP... do regular checks for 7 days etc., etc. Last time they asked I didn't bother... feeling well enough in myself.

I now check very irregular and still get 'high' readings BUT I no longer worry about it. Why? Well... I asked one of the nurses what I could do because taking additional BP meds while on the prostate meds wasn't helpful. Even taking 2.5mg (half a Losarten pill) wouldn't have any effect *because it would be too low*!!! She said "take more salt"! MORE SALT...I always thought salt was to be avoided...

You may (may not!) find this bit funny but I was watching one of the Dr Martin episodes in which someone was having the same issues as me with BP. He was diagnosed with PoTs... told to take more salt and drink more fluids... as part of management. I'm now following *some* of the things mentioned for PoTs and found it extremely helpful *for me*.

(Seems also that a higher BP in some people is natural for *them*...)

This response wasn't meant to be this long...
 
RogerS said:
Can this sort of thing be done in a spreadsheet ? Ideally Apple Numbers
Click to expand...
Yes as said Excel is very simple, with three samples per day maybe a stacked graph over a week so each day shows the three pressures and easily compared with the other days. You are now living in a warmer enviroment way down south and maybe your pills need an adjustment to accomodate the migration.
 
Spectric said:
............You are now living in a warmer enviroment way down south and maybe your pills need an adjustment to accomodate the migration.
Click to expand...

Sussed it......... A distinct lack of saliva from large biting gnats. The anticoagulant must have been thinning the blood when living up on the hills. ;)
 
Malc2098 said:
Done in LibreOffice, exported as a .xlsx file.
Click to expand...
I really like LibreOffice.

I am also getting to like Google Sheets for odd jobs. For example my drug re-ordering spreadsheet (see older thread), as its "conditional formatting" function makes that sort of thing very easy. And then it's available on my desktop and all my devices.

I'm not sure if Sheets can make charts and graphs (I've never tried). I'd use LibreOffice Calc for that as my first preference.
 
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I find libre Office Draw is my go to for Dtp work
Its easy on the eye ,intuitive and ,most of all for an Olympic-class tightwad its free
 
fuse said:
I find libre Office Draw is my go to for Dtp work
Its easy on the eye ,intuitive and ,most of all for an Olympic-class tightwad its free
Click to expand...
Have you tried Scribus for DTP?

It's also open source and free, and it will do anything from a newletter to a full book, with graphics, indices, appendices, bibliographies, footnotes, endnotes, etc. It doesn't do proper imposition (most DTP packages don't), but unlike Word, it doesn't seem to bog down handling book-sized documents of 100 pages or more either.

I rather like it, although I rarely use it these days.

I have a couple of programs that just do imposition if necessary (from sequential PDF files), but my laser printer will do it in hardware for some types of smaller task (HP's old "mopier" functionality).
 
Its preinstalled in Mint so its always been there for me at the drop of a hat on all the machines
I played a bit with Scribus and Inkscape but always seemed to return to the native app.
I use it to design and subsequently update my honey jar labelling
Back a decade ago when I used windows it was Serif page plus
 
Another vote for LibreOffice Draw for drawing type stuff. In general the LibreOffice applications are fine but not quite as good as the Microsoft versions (I've never tried the Apple ones). However, in the specific case of the drawing package, LibreOffice Draw is miles better than anything from Microsoft (including, in my opinion, Visio). Inkscape's good (but not as good as CorelDRAW or Adobe Illustrator) for vector line drawings where you're manipulating curve nodes but for most things LibreOffice Draw is easy and works really well.

I mostly use CorelDRAW but if I didn't have it I'd use LibreOffice Draw.

I tried Scribus for DTP but didn't really get on with it, but then I've never used a professional DTP package (and don't often produce things for which desktop publishing seems that applicable) so perhaps it's a mindset thing. The only really big document I've ever written was my PhD thesis and that was in LaTeX which is a completely different proposition altogether!
 
Rog, with my kidney issues I had to do BP at least once a week and then when another half pill was added daily for 2 weeks.
From start 2019 I have kept an Excel sheet with a graph and then e-mail that to Nephro and my GP.
It shows the top high and low limits as well as the bottom high and low limits. I also record the % saturation and BPM.
Wife has a machine according to which I should be dead and rotted. So now rely on the clinic or sister at the Drs.
Can't show you now as I am in the garage on XP laptop.
 
I thought Scribus would output LaTex, but I might be wrong.

For my degree dissertation years ago, I used Word - It crashed at one point taking several days of work with it. That was the start of my interest in Unix-like systems...

Back on topic, I, too, have recently been wrestling with blood pressure reporting. I did have an Omron BP monitor with a USB interface, but I distrusted it for mechanical reasons. So I bought another, this time with Bluetooth and an app. Handy, but it turned out that comma-delimited is unacceptable to the third-party comms application my GP surgery uses. So is .xls. In fact it won't accept any plain text files.

But it will accept jpegs and PDFs, so the latter is what they got. Serves them right if they have to re-input the data.
 
How did you lose so much work, Eric? Didn't you have a backup?

Yesterday
I thought backups were a waste of pay
Now my database has gone away
Oh I believe in Yesterday

Suddenly,
There's not half the files there used to be
Ther's a virus hanging over me,
The server crashed so suddenly

I, clicked, something wrong
What it was, I couldn't say
Now, my, spreadsheet's gone and I long ofr
Yesterday

Yesterday
I was writing emails all the day
But now there's a ransom I must pay
Oh I believe in Yesterday

What, the, problem was,
I don't know, it didn't say,
Just, a, 404
It was there,
Just yesterday, ay, ay, ay

Yesterday
I thought all my work was here to stay
Now I only want to cry today
Oh I believe in Yesterday
Mmm, mm, mm, mmm
Mmm, mm-mmmmmm.

(Says Steve, who once lost several weeks work of finished video because he didn't have a backup beyond the raw footage...)
 
On the subject of technology I had half dozed off in the chair tonight when a loud beep from my watch woke me up with a message that my heart rate was very low, 34 bpm it said. Sat up straightened my watch and it sjhowed 68 but I'd hazard a guess that it put my BP through the roof. :ROFLMAO:

I wouldn't care but I never look at that app on my watch.
 
Lons said:
On the subject of technology I had half dozed off in the chair tonight when a loud beep from my watch woke me up with a message that my heart rate was very low, 34 bpm it said. Sat up straightened my watch and it sjhowed 68 but I'd hazard a guess that it put my BP through the roof. :ROFLMAO:

I wouldn't care but I never look at that app on my watch.
Click to expand...
It was that dodgy bottle of Spanish plonk what did it, Bob ;)
 
Eric the Viking said:
Yes, Steve, I had a backup (and earlier ones on tape): Word trashed the most recent one, too.
And anyway, you're pulling 16+ hr days trying to finish against a deadline (I had to take leave from work). Mistakes get made.
Click to expand...
When I was finishing off my PhD (and doing long days seven days a week) a colleague of mine who was in the same boat in terms of timescales lost his thesis due to Word crashing. He was pretty good (by most people's standards) at backing stuff up but it had been about 3 days since the last one. Three days work in the last few weeks of a PhD is quite a big deal. I felt extremely grateful that I didn't use Word.
 
Without degenerating into a Four Yorkshiremen debate, when I did my dissertation for my degree, it had to be handwritten, passed to one of the typists in the Department office who then typed the original and 2 carbon copies. Last minute alterations were not welcomed! Fortunately, Tippex had been invented by then but lining up the top and carbon copies to make corrections was not always easy. I remember that we had to pay the typists for their work (they did it in their spare time) but not whether we were reimbursed by the Department.

N.B. The typists themselves were very skilled as their keyboards contained many mathematical and algebraic symbols although I doubt if they ever had any idea of what they were typing.
 
Typists doing the work for you? Bloody luxury! 😆

My PhD thesis was hand-written (by choice as it meant I could do the writing away from distractions) and then typed up by me (which is actually a really good way of reducing mistakes as you spot them when typing up - similar to what I do for forum/website posts: write the whole thing out and then go back and read it from the start before posting).
 
Well this has been a salutary thread. I'm doing some essential legal stuff at the moment which requires lots of typing and scores of pages. Using MS Word, which I have always preferred for typing. (I don't like Libre office or the Apple variant which is not flexible enough). Came down to my office this morning and the Main Mac was dead as a dodo. Would not re-start.

I got it going again after a slight panic (had to unplug everything for some reason), and I do back up automatically to the cloud anyway, but am now adding belt and braces with two external drives as well.

Based on Dr Al's recommendation I will try Libre office drawing tool at some point.
 
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RogerS said:
Just a bit of background. I was on just the one BP med - Felodipine but then after routine bloods and urine, my ACR had jumped. Without so much as a by-your-leave and without even seeing or speaking to a GP at the surgery near the house rental (which rather hacked me off as being rather impersonal), I got a peremptory message on the NHS app "I've put you on Ramipril"

Fair enough it brought the BP back under control but gave me the annoying dry cough side-effect (admittedly took me many months to spot the linkage) and so having moved to our new home and a different (and excellent GP surgery), I asked for a different med and got Candesartan - which gave me the s**ts.

Then I noticed the trend in the readings hence seeing the GP this week.

Now here's the thing. The NICE protocol for treating BP says put the patient on another extra drug if the first one doesn't work. But that protocol will have been based on all sorts of clinical trials, metadata, studies etc etc and a one-size fits all approach adopted. But the standard deviation curve says 'what about the outriggers?'. So since Felodipine gave me no side-effects and is a delayed action drug and I'm on only 5mg and 10mg a day is allowed then I'm going to suggest I take two ...one in the morning and the second 12 hours later. Hence trying to make the figures clear for the GP. And get the green light to just have the one type of med.
Click to expand...
 
Dr.Al said:
Typists doing the work for you? Bloody luxury! 😆

... similar to what I do for forum/website posts: write the whole thing out and then go back and read it from the start before posting).
Click to expand...

When I was writing for F&C years ago I did much the same thing but I could never see the obvious errors in my text. Fortunately my daughter was at home at the time studying for her MA so she was quite happy to wield the red pen and then fling the text back to me - Rob

Edit - odd fact but apparently true. Very senior ranks in the Army write (or correct mistakes) in green ink and are the only ones allowed to do so.
 
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