I'm applying for Long Term Care Insurance, as a hedge against the distant future time when I have outlived everyone except my daughter, who obviously can barely support herself, let alone pay for the care of her ancient and decrepit mother.

No one in my family has ever needed long-term care. Usually they live well into their 80's and then shed the mortal coil in a matter of days or hours. Nevertheless, I have a horror of being old. unable to care for myself, and out on the street on a filthy mattress in the cold because I have run out of financial resources and there is no one to help me.

Hence, my desire for this Long Term Care Insurance. I made the application. The company's representative called me and we had a telephone interview: medical questions, memory questions, orientation and dementia questions and all. Then the company sent a live person to my house, not my place of work, to interview me (and probably check my living conditions).

In the process of the interview this person (a nurse) took my blood pressure. It was 195 over 98, she said. I was thunderstruck. If I had a blood pressure that high, I'd be in the emergency room. My normal blood pressure is considerably lower--my doctor takes it at every visit, my dentist takes it, the Red Cross takes it when I give blood, and I take it occasionally for myself just to benchmark. Never, at any time, have I had it anywhere nearly so high, and I told her so.

I went upstairs and got my own BP device and took my blood pressure for her and it was at its usual midday maximum (though by this time I was so upset it wouldn't have surprised me if it had been 145 over 90 or more). She said she had to go by her own readings.

Naturally, that is the blood pressure she is going to report to the company and I will undoubtedly be turned down for insurance. (Which means from now on I will have to answer "Yes" to the question, "Have you ever been denied insurance coverage?").

I'm still wondering what in the hell happened.