Sci Fi SoundTrack

A week ago, today, two of my specialists conferred and sent down word that I was stop taking one small dose of rat poison a day in order to keep my blood thinned out enough to prevent blood clots from forming. The doctors said it’s time to see ‘what happens when we take you off the thinners.’ Fantastic. I am your lab rat.

So this is now day 8 of my circulatory system handling its own shit. Hopefully it does it without trying to kill me, like it tried to 11 months ago.

11 months ago I woke up at at some godawful hour in the morning feeling like my chest had been sledge hammered, and that after that, someone had run along with a rapier and thrust it right into my breastbone several times.

Now, to recap, I’d just gotten out of the hospital a few days earlier or so from an event with my heart. That had ended with a doctor shoving a fiberoptic tube up my groin so he could show me the inside of my heart on a small CRT monitor that I wouldn’t even take for free to hook my laptop up to. I’d been declared ‘ok’ to go home, but because my damned *femoral artery* was being held closed with something called a ‘perclose stitch’ I was down with the whole ‘lay around the house and do nothing’ marching orders.

I was so worried about that stitch I told Emily, as she drove me back home, that crashing would be a bad idea, as I was imagining the damn thing popping loose and me bleeding to death like someone in a bad anime film: blood gushing out in a firehose stream from my inner leg. She just gave me ‘the look.’

So after this close brush with death, I’d regained my appreciation for totally shit food I thought I was never going to be able to have a chance to eat. And when I woke up that night feeling like I was being stabbed to death like Ceasar out in front of the senate, I thought it had to be all the crap food I was celebratorialy eating.

But within fairly short order, after the pain hit a whole new level of ‘holy-shit’ and I started throwing up everywhere and crying, I came to the conclusion that, you know, something was really frigging wrong and I needed to go to the ER.

My dear, darling and very patient wife agreed.

So this time, when they looked at my lungs, they found blood clots, which were causing my rapid breathing, racing heart, and more importantly, the crazy stabbing feelings. I felt like a pig on a spit.

That’s how I got my second hospital stay, hooked up to blood thinners and asking nurses who didn’t have answers why it kept feeling like my chest would occasionally suddenly feel like someone tossed gas all over the insides of it and lit it on fire. It was eventually explained that the blood thinner dripping into my IV didn’t make the clots magically go away, it just stopped new ones from forming while my body worked on healing.

When I was discharged, I switched to a new blood thinner taken orally. It’s the rat poison I mentioned above. Coumadin is swapped in for Warfarin, and Warfarin is what they give rats. Give a rat some tasty-laced warfarin, and he bleeds out internally because his blood can’t clot.

That’s what I swallowed a dose of each day since November of last year. Unlike rats, I got to get my blood tested every couple weeks to check my levels (take that D-Con!). You don’t want it too high, or you bleed internally. Too low, and those annoying clots might try stage a comeback. You also have to try and avoid activities that lead to bleeding, as your blood has trouble clotting (the desired effect), so cuts are slow to stem. So, shaving becomes interesting.

The other really annoying thing about the blood thinners is that they ruined alcohol for me. A sip of scotch left me dizzy. Quarter of a beer left me feeling hammered. But not in a good way, in a weird, non-fuzzy non-good why-am-I-dizzy and my vision not tracking right feeling kind of way.

And the docs didn’t really initially explain this to me, but post PE, you still have a lot of the symptoms of the PE continue on. Stabbing chest pain? Shortness of breath? Fatigue? On a semi-weekly basis. Some events so painful that a trip to the ER would see only a dose of morphine taking the edge of the pain off, but no one wanted me on painkillers because that would effect my ability to tell what kind of chest pain I was having and whether I needed to go into the ER to get checked over.

Yes, one ER doc told me during a visit, this will continue happening for a long time. He had a PE once, he told me, and he still, years later, would get chest pain. He’d learned to ignore it, but his wife would notice when he was rubbing that same spot on his chest and ask if he was okay.

Things to look forward to for a hundred, please, Alex…

You too can have a PE, kids. What does it take? Sitting in one place for a long time gives blood time to pool in your legs and clot, then that travels up into your lungs. That’s probably what got me: a week lying in a hospital bed without moving, then three days lying around while recovering from the heart catheter. Sitting too long in a plane can cause blood clots. Sitting in a car for a long drive can too. Sitting in an office chair. Dehydration causes blood to thicken. Smoking, some forms of drugs, can also cause higher risk (I was asked about all of the above). Being overweight puts you at risk for clots.

So you can better frigging believe I’m trying to pay more attention to how long I sit in front of my screen!

This weekend I had a strong attack of post-PE chest pain. It got pretty painful Saturday, but has receded since then. It’s like most of the mid-level chest pains I get, only, since I’m no longer on thinners I’ve slept little and been freaked out much. It’s not gotten painful enough to get me to head into the ER, and it’s been receding, like all the usual outbreaks of chest pain, ever since Saturday, thank goodness.

So it’s been 8 days of no thinners. Last night I poured a finger of my finest scotch and enjoyed a real drink. It didn’t leave me feeling weird, it felt like I’d had a finger of enjoyable scotch.

Oh yeah.

Tonight I’m having a damn celebratory beer. I’m hoping I never talk about doses of that damn rat poison on this blog until I’m in my dotage.

Seriously kids, don’t do clots.