This first post of November 2018 is a meditation on my uncommon blood and what I did when doctors told me to ingest rat poison and also my recent reflection on being prescribed yet ANOTHER med.
As October 2018 ended and November began, I underwent a medical procedure-- two days later a consultation with medical specialist.
I'm going to write about my consultation with the specialist because you don't want to hear the story of my colonoscopy. (But, believe me, it’s a story…)
I inaugurated this blog's posts last month with comments about my unremarkable brain..
NOTE: Genealogically my blood is as common as anyone’s. What makes the stuff my heart pumps so unusual is its not one-- but two!-- genetic factors which makes it clot really really really well...
My Uncommon Blood
Quite accidentally in July 2010, I ran a test on myself which revealed my blood contained not just the Factor V Leiden clotting factor but also the Factor II. This just means I clot like a beast.
What was the test? Well, I don't really know. Midweek the first week of July I started to have pains in my left calf which I thought might be a charleyhorse, but which I couldn't stretch out.
Yadda yadda yadda -- clots in my lungs which required six days in the hospital.
What I Did when Doctors Told Me to Ingest Rat Poison
Perhaps you all recall those TV commercials with the late Arnold Palmer, comedian Kevin Nealon, basketball great Chris Bosch and some NASCAR star? They were advertising a prescription drug which helps folks with really clotty blood like mine.
Was I prescribed this medication? No. In 2010, my health insurance wouldn't pay for THAT medication.
Instead I was prescribed Wonder Drug of the 1950's: Warfarin.
Some of the details in the following History of Warfarin may be incorrect but basically:
1) Scientists develop a substance
2) Scientist test substance on rats
3) Rats die of internal hemmoraging
4) Substance marketed as rat poison
5) Demand for rat poison wanes
6) Some nut decides substance can be used to treat folks with blood that clots like a beast if the people taking the substance can adhere to dietary limitations and, since those folks usually die really quickly anyway,...
7) Wonder drug Warfarin introduced
Sixty years later-- I was told to ingest rat posion and given ridiculously impossible dietary restrictions to follow involving the intake of Vitamin K. Since the drug was introduced in back when men had wives who stayed at home (or cooks) who planned their meals, no problem looking out for that pesky Vitamin K.
When I insisted I didn't want to take the stupid medication anymore because I missed certain foods, my idiot doctors would insist: "no one said you couldn't have blueberries anymore, you just have to consistently eat 7 blueberries every day...."
By 2014, it was decided I could take one low dose aspirin every day. Which I'm cool with....
But...
My current medical profession recently sent me to see a hematologist and the recommendation: now that the cost of the TV anticoagulant has dropped, it's time to take that...
Except--- I would have to watch out if I ever traveled to a remote location.... because, if I were injured there probably wouldn't be anyone with the antidote to the anticoagulant around....
Now, I'm not big on traveling to remote locations-- it's not a fave for me like blueberries. But it's at lease something I enjoy as much as cranberries-- which also raised Warfarin warning flags.
Even more so, I know myself and have come to know myself better in light of my diagnosis as having depression and anxiety. While it may be oversimplifying the dual affliction, for me they lead to periods in which I am overcome with horrific inertia (depression) which simultaneously cause me such inner distress (anxiety) that I tend to hurl myself into action.
(NOTE: I am actually completing this entry in one of those "hurlings")
Knowing that I have this inclination explains why I can be a klutz at times-- I simply don't "stick the landing" well when I vault from wherever I've been sitting or laying in depressed inertia.
Recognizing this makes the idea of taking some medication which requires an antidote were I to injure myself VERY undesirable.
It really doesn't matter to me if I fall in the company of many people in an exotic locale or by myself at home-- in both instances, I could still bleed internally to death.
So, please pass the baby aspirin....
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Self assessment
In November, the added challenge will be sticking with the schedule I previously mentioned of posting between the 9th and 23rd of each month. I adopted this schedule assuming that a horrifically stressful but periodically resolvable situation would be on track to its periodic resolution. This situation hasn't been resolved so I am in anxiously uncharted territory. After dragging myself out of a multi-day emotional roadside ditch, I concluded that-- in order to proceed with and meet my schedule-- I'd make the adjustment of providing teasers for my posts whenever I cannot complete the entire post, then double back to complete it later. It, of course, complicates my overall task but it's all I can do. There's no point of getting even MORE depressed and anxious about shit.
Now I'm going to eat a shit-ton of blueberry coffee cake (and a piece of fruit!), post this to Facebook (but first a birthday shoutout to a college friend!), do a little cleanup on my post labels till 1:30p (and a maybe start this month's R O Y G B I V cycle), finish my coffee and go look for this farmers market in West Oakland I keep missing. (Didn't find it this time either.)
Now I'm going to eat a shit-ton of blueberry coffee cake (and a piece of fruit!), post this to Facebook (but first a birthday shoutout to a college friend!), do a little cleanup on my post labels till 1:30p (and a maybe start this month's R O Y G B I V cycle), finish my coffee and go look for this farmers market in West Oakland I keep missing. (Didn't find it this time either.)
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