(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

[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.)