“I had consistently high blood pressure, ultimately culminating in me developing fulminating pre-eclampsia and nearly dying.”

These are the words of Elizabeth, whose journey underscores the life-threatening consequences of untreated hypertension. Elizabeth is a member of the SMARTSHAPE Patient Experience Panel, and shares her hypertension story.

After her first pregnancy with pre-eclampsia, and her second pregnancy marked by gestational hypertension, her blood pressure went largely unmonitored – until she collapsed at age 46. The cause? “I’d had a massive subarachnoid brain haemorrhage and stroke, which had been caused by a ruptured aneurysm. That aneurysm had ruptured because I’d had high blood pressure.”

From that point on, her blood pressure became a priority, and it has been monitored probably most days in the last 13 years.