Question: I am taking Lisinopril to control my blood pressure, daily, and have been for several months. Yesterday afternoon after the air began to cool and the sun was off my working area, I spent about an hour digging out blackberries and poison oak from some very loose soil on a hillside. This required a good deal of bending over, but I did not consider it as a good deal of physical effort. I became quite tired.

This morning I pulled thistles out of some slightly more compact soil, in the sunlight (about 70 degrees) for perhaps 15 minutes and was totally exhausted. I was sweating profusely, gasping for breath, and saw a field of blobs in the center of my visual field. They were purple where there was light, and yellow if I looked into a shaded area of the back yard. They persisted for perhaps an hour. My exhaustion was severe, requiring sitting down for perhaps 10 minutes, and then not doing anything strenuous for some hours. Both my wife and my adult grandson expressed some concern at my physical appearance. I have been drinking a lot of water since then because I think I became dehydrated , and still now perhaps 9 hours later still have a bit of fatigue.

I am 74, my blood pressure was reading around 140/90 before the Lisinopril and about 110/80 with it. I have been accustomed to doing about 1 hour of yard work, usually involving digging several wheelbarrow loads of loose soil up and moving it a 100 or 200' to the site I wanted it to be. This work has not left me exhausted prior to this, but I haven't been able to do it much all winter due to the weather.

I have made an appointment for next week with my medical provider who prescribed the medicine to see if the dose needs to be adjusted or the medication changed. Any thoughts?