w00t w00t booyah

I wanted to suggest a home monitor as well. I personally use an Omron HEM-637, which is a wrist monitor. I was a little dubious about the wrist kind myself, but my dad recently went through a bunch of different BP monitors (including a bunch of arm monitors) and found this to be one of the only ones that had a reasonably accurate reading on him, which is why he recommended it to me. It's also tested accurate on everybody else I know who's used it (him, myself, and a family friend). Personally, I actually think it gives a more accurate reading on me than arm monitors because when I feel something constricting my arm, it triggers a bit of a panic reaction and I can feel my heart rate go up, but with the wrist I stay much calmer, and it's also a bit easier to work with (and the HEM-637 also has a few other features like recording and graphing your measurements over the past several weeks, which is nice).

One thing, when you do get a blood pressure monitor for yourself (which I definitely recommend), take it in with you to your doctor's office and test it side-by-side with an "official" reading. That will give you a decent idea of whether it's accurate or not for you.

If you really want to know what's going on with your BP, you really need to test it on a regular basis, at least twice a day, for a while to get an idea of how it fluctuates.

After using mine for a while, I'm not nearly as concerned about my blood pressure as I was originally, because on a daily basis my pressure is significantly less than it always tests in a doctor's office. Of course that kind of knowledge, while reassuring, still wouldn't help you with passing tests and such..