(no subject)

[lesmisloony]

W
E
L
P.

So, I've expressed a lot of interest in moving toward a natural route to keeping my blood thin rather than taking this damn Coumadin forever, yes?

How about when I talked to my doctor about it she told me that fish oil wouldn't work because Coumadin exists to fight Vitamin K in your blood, and fish oil doesn't do the same thing, so fish oil won't show up on an INR test. I just sorta said okay and moved on.

Anyway just now I was googling about, trying to figure out which direction I should take my health care in here in NYC, and... I found this article. Assuming you aren't gonna read that, let me pull out the best part:

It certainly thins the blood, but it does so by "poisoning and killing off" the vitamin K in your body. Over enough time, the near-total lack of vitamin K will (not "could" -- WILL) cause osteoporosis, arterial calcification, cognitive malfunction, and many, many other problems.

I feel so LIED TO. My doctor NEVER MENTIONED THIS.

Vitamin K isn't MY enemy. Vitamin K is this medication's enemy, because the INR is only able to measure the presence of Vitamin K in your blood. They're going to tear my body apart to try to prevent this ONE freak occurence from coming back despite the precautions I've been taking??? I'm actually crying a little bit right now. I'm so angry that not one of those doctors told me this. Not one person ever made this clear. They made me believe I would never taste broccoli or spinach again.

The article goes on to say that FISH OIL is a natural blood thinner, like I fucking said. And a SAFE one. There is a long, awful list of side effects to Coumadin.

That's it. I'm done after April. I will take my last Coumadin pill on the eve of my 24th birthday, and then I'm fucking throwing the bottle out the window.

Comments

[silver-rose86.livejournal.com]

Despite that fact I'd like to a say a story like this surprises me, it doesn't. My youngest daughter has special needs thanks to medical negligence.. and even though I will more than ever to never have to deal with American doctors, for Ileanna's sake I have to deal with them several times a month. What I have learned, as I battle for my daughter's health and some level of normalcy is: Doctors so NOT ever tell you all the risks, side effects, negatives of a situation/treatment/drug. They will push their agenda, no matter what the consequences. They will lie, manipulate, omit and guilt trip until you acquiesce. As I'm sure you know, American medicine is extremely flawed since it is a business. By making it a money making racket, there is automatically agenda, conflict of interest and breech of ethics. They prescribe what makes them the most money and gets you out the door, not what is necessarily best and safest for the patient.
I wish you luck and hope that your fish oil alternative will work out for you.

[lesmisloony.livejournal.com]

I think I'm just really angry that no one sat me down and explained what they were giving me. They just wrote me a prescription and pushed me out the door, then scolded me whenever my INR wasn't spot-on.

I'm going to stay on it the six months that the French hospital recommended post-embolism, but then I quit. I've changed my diet and exercise regime since all this went down anyway, and if worse comes to worse my new apartment is only a couple blocks away from a massive hospital. But given the choice between a certainty of a vitamin K deficiency and a slight potential of another clot (now that I'm active-r and eating healthier and off birth control)... I think there's one really obvious (and much cheaper) path here.

[sapphirecrow.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna say, I wouldn't trust articles like that, especially ones with a clear bias and interest in promoting 'natural healthcare'. :S I don't see why that article is somehow more believable than another article promoting Coumadin, and it pings as even more not-quite-trustworthy with language like "poisoning and killing off", and going back to the same argument of 'big pharma won't do this' which can basically be used for... every argument against any drug. There are just as many other articles against that author (Dr Wright?), and he doesn't sound like someone particularly trustworthy http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/Nonrecorg/aqa.html.

I'm also iffy of anything mentioning fish oil, because that's one of the most famous not-really-that-effective things advocated. Maybe it does help prevent blood clots, but not in the same way as Coumadin does, and not with an effect that's been shown noticeably to exist.

I thought the point of taking a vitamin K antagonist was so that vitamin K can't catalyse a blood clot - at least, not as easily? Idk, I don't get what you mean by it not being your enemy, because it... kinda is? and that's why Coumadin exists as a blood thinner, and that's the point of the medicine? Taking medication is part of precaution...

The use of such loaded language like "poisoning" and "killing" and "not could - WILL" is meant to be inflammatory - Coumadin prevents recycling of vitamin K, it doesn't literally poison or kill anything in your body. It just reads - to me - like Dr Wright is advertising his clinic and his books by slamming all other doctors so that people will feel more on his side, and playing up to people's fears by using emotional language and encouraging them to blame the faceless big pharma.

... although I don't think it'll affect you that much if you eat some spinach or broccoli, i don't think the amount of vitamin K you can get from an average portion can have much of an effect on anything. unless you're, like, eating a whole bucket of spinach every meal.

anyway I don't want to sound too much like "DON'T BE STUPID", but I just think health and medicine are important and I hope you're ok! Please don't panic too much over anything you read on the internet :S and I guess I could be just as biased as anyone else...also I live in England so I'm sure the healthcare system is completely different here, so I'm pretty much ignorant of what goes on in an American clinic.

[lesmisloony.livejournal.com]

The basic thing is that vitamin K deficiency can cause all sorts of problems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_K#Deficiency), and it's not just this article's advice. I've been slogging through all sorts of stuff for ages trying to figure out why something wasn't adding up, and this is what did it.

Fish oil definitely is a blood thinner, as are all the other foods I have listed on the first page of my personal recipe book. Believe me, I've been doing this research for months now.

Also, and I know people who say things like this are painted as crazies, but doctors really are quite controlled by pharmaceutical companies. They really do get paid to give you pills that combat symptoms rather than step back and look at the big picture.

As for coumadin, it's usually given to much older people, so long-term effects of a lack of vitamin K on the body probably aren't given very much thought. However, I am 23, and they're saying they want me on this pill for the rest of my life--maybe SIXTY YEARS. Sixty years of no vitamin K?

I'm also very convinced that the embolism resulted from being on birth control and sitting still for nearly a week as I pouted about my life, only getting up to refill my water bottle and go to the bathroom. My birth control was taken away at the hospital, and though I miss it I know better than to get any more. I've begun a simple running regime sort of thing as well (on hold now as I settle into NYC, but I kept it up for nearly a month before the move).

Basically, the question is, do I want to risk the horrible life-ending things that come from a vitamin K deficiency (and given that I'm taking 10mg of a vitamin K-destroying medication every day and avoiding spinach or broccoli or any of those other greens like the plague, I think that's a description of my situation rather than a crazy internet person's opinion) just to keep preventing something that very likely was a freak occurence?

As for coumadin, if it wasn't making me so unhappy I wouldn't spend so much time trying to find a viable substitute. I'm not allowed to get dental work done while on coumadin. I can't donate blood. I can't take aspirin. The doctor wouldn't prescribe me anything for a sinus infection that's been irritating me since Christmas because she said the two pills would interfere. I can't eat spinach, did I mention that? I fucking hate it.

I'm also interested in promoting natural healthcare over the rat poison the pharmacy prescribed me. It has been firmly proven that healthy food and an exercise regime can REVERSE the effects of heart disease. Acupuncture is a real, valid form of health care. You've probably heard people complain about fish oil because they think it will clear up your skin or something, I don't know, but the fact is, it is a blood thinner.

And American doctors are pretty skeevy. They get sent free shit from pharmaceutical companies and paid by the number of patients they diagnose rather than the quality of care the give. They're also paid highly when people go to the hospital. They're not bad people, they're just in a fucked-up system.

[lesmisloony.livejournal.com]

Oh, I should add, since you're not from around here, I don't know how English health care functions, but coumadin is about $12 a month with my parents' insurance, and my monthly INR checks are $30. If the level is off, they schedule weekly appointments until it comes up normal two weeks in a row--$30 each time. So in a year where nothing goes awry and I only go to the doctor once a month, I pay $504. And I have to get off my parents' health insurance in a couple years.

Meanwhile, Target had a bottle of 250 fish oil pills (1000mg each) for $15. If I took two a day, it's about $44 a year.

[mmebahorel.livejournal.com]

My former roommate had the birth control blood clot - in her head! Seriously scary. But she didn't end up on coumadin for the rest of her life, and that's after a blood clot was IN HER BRAIN. She is on it now because she has breast cancer and the chemo she's on tends to thicken the blood, so it's something you do have to watch, but she certainly wasn't on coumadin before that. I watched the girl eat lots and lots of broccoli and a certain amount of spinach.

Not saying you're 100% safe to quit it, since I'm not a doctor, but I do think a second opinion is necessary here. Do you know what the French doctor wanted you to do after the 6 months?

[lesmisloony.livejournal.com]

The French doctors were kind of like, "At least six months, then we'll see". The reason the American doctor wanted me to be on it forever is because there's a high level of that one clotting fiber in my blood. He said that he always recommended a lifetime of coumadin to people whose test results come back showing anything, but most people my age decide to go off after a while, which he doesn't recommend. I've got an appointment to go back to that hospital and do the same test again to make sure the results were a long-term thing and not just a freak occurence, but since we still haven't stopped getting bills for my last visit to him ($250 for him to speak to me, between $75 and $400 for each of the TWENTY-SIX tests he ran on my blood, and another $250 for him deigning to tell me the test results a month later), you can imagine why I'm not willing to take the train back to NC and pay for all that. Thank GOD my parents agreed to take those ridiculous bills on, even though they still haven't been able to pay them off.

(This might give a little more insight into why I mistrust doctors right now.)

[lesmisloony.livejournal.com]

OH but my grandma was a nurse and is a health nut and she 100% agreed that fish oil, healthy food, and exercise would do the trick. I sort of forgot about that because a week later my doctor handwaved that theory with her mumblings about how fish oil doesn't show up on an INR.