Blood is (usually) thicker than water
Today was a big day of errands. I helped with a Linux install this morning (yea, free software). After lunch, I had to go to the store and get lightbulbs and a few other odds and ends. Afterwords, I suggested that we stop at the doctor's office and get Linda's blood tested.
The blood test is a simple thing. They prick her finger, place a few drops on a slide, and a little device measures how long it takes to clot. There is a little LCD screen where it gives you the results as a number. Linda is supposed to keep her number between 2 and 3. Lower numbers are thicker, so, to prevent unhealthy clots, she wants her results to be above 2. However, higher numbers can be bad, because you might start bleeding internally. That's how warfarin (the drug) works when they put it in rat poison.
Linda has been above 3 a few times. Sometimes, just a bit over 3. We didn't make any medication changes, we just ate a few more green things like broccoli or spinach. Vitamin K is an essential nutrient for clotting (warfarin works be depleting your body of it), and these foods have it. She almost never gets anywhere near 4.
Notice how I'm not telling you what her number was today?
A few weeks ago, her number was something like 5.2, much higher than it had ever been before. We skipped a dose of medication to bring it down, ate some green stuff, and checked it soon after. Everything was fine, back between 2 and 3.
Today, Linda set a new personal record, 6.1. We're skipping a dose tonight, and the doctor had me fill a less potent prescription (it comes in lots of different strenths, all color coded) to start tomorrow.
In much less drammatic news, I set a new personal record, too. The scale had me at
<< Home