Anybody Else Taking Rat Poison?

Doc put me on Coumadine (which really Warfarin which is a rat poison) to thin my blood to prevent throwing clots and having a stroke or embolism.  (Root cause was an a-flutter heart rhythm which was fixed by cardio-ablation.)  Coumadine is neutralized or reversed by vitamin K which is found in kale, spinach, broccoli and most of the things I built by TTs to grow.

For anyone else who is on this drug regimen, what do you grow in your SFG instead of these dark green, leafy veg?

I think Plantoid has just started the same rat poison. He was cursing about his kale as well! Hopefully he will chime in here soon.

I have A fib.  A cardio version did not work in my case.  I have had the irregular heart beat since 1999 and have taken Coumadin (and cartia, and crestor, and lisinopril, and coreg all trying to control my heart rhythm) since that time. I had a stroke in 2008 and they upped the amount of Coumadin I am taking.  I also received a kit that tests the INR (just like they test it when you go to the doctor) and I have to do the testing every week and call it in to a monitoring company who then calls my heart doctor with the results.  And then the doctors office calls me and tells me how to adjust my dosage (my INR goes up and down without reason so it has to be tested frequently).

According to my doctor's assistant, you can eat green leafy vegetables but the amount that you eat should be consistent.  If you eat a lot this week, the INR goes down (thicker) and then they adjust the dosage and next week you don't eat any green leafy vegetable and your INR will go up because they increased your dosage but you changed your eating.  So you can work with your doctor to determine the diet and dosage.

had to take Plavix for awhile..(after a "near widowmaker" feet first flight to the hospital) Doc never warned me too much about diet other than "everything in moderation".....I exercised my tail off for a year and a half/ate right & he let me off it..still running/working out..diet isn't near as good...but I feel pretty good 5 yrs later for a guy shocked back to life...there's a great book on the heart & diet called.....Reversing Heart Disease by Dean Ornish

http://www.amazon.com/Ornishs-Program-Reversing-Heart-Disease/dp/0804110387

Did hear a fella tell me leafy greens could be bad for ppl with kidney issues...

rabbithutch wrote:Doc put me on Coumadine (which really Warfarin which is a rat poison) to thin my blood to prevent throwing clots and having a stroke or embolism.  (Root cause was an a-flutter heart rhythm which was fixed by cardio-ablation.)  Coumadine is neutralized or reversed by vitamin K which is found in kale, spinach, broccoli and most of the things I built by TTs to grow.

For anyone else who is on this drug regimen, what do you grow in your SFG instead of these dark green, leafy veg?

Now you have the same problem as In do .

 You can still have your greens but do take them regular and in moderation that way your dosage will be adjusted to the average vit K intake you have.

 I found a USA written booklet about living with warfarin for a few pounds sterling .

 It brought together lots of things that were hidden out of view in the WWW. that would take you ages to locate.
 It mentions quite a lot of the brassica family , green onions , cranberries + its juice & Goghi berries as things to be very moderate with ..
The cranberry juice concentrated is forbidden ... boy do I miss that as an iced drink .

We find it strange measuring things by the cupful as a measure of the forbidden friuts so to speak .

The book does not mention carrots and I'm wondering if it is an old wives tale that they are high  in vit K ..
I will do a google & a  wikki and see the general consensus of opinion on it right now .......


 Aarrgh .... they have it a plenty .

 This site is a quick peek into things healthaliciousness.com/articles/food-sources-of-vitamin-k

Oh, crud. That article lists all the reasons for which gardeners live! Well, one has to do what one has to do.

Thank you, each and every one, for the response and advice.  I've only been on this routine for 3 days now; so it is all new to me.

My diet has never been really heavy in any of the high vitamin K foods.  Periodically - as at New Year's Day - I would cook and eat collards with kale, together.  I also cook turnip greens and black-eyed peas in ham hock and eat it with baked ham.  I'm sure I overdo on that occasion, but that is not a regular diet for me.

Now that I have this blip on the radar screen - really the ECG screen - I have to rethink my Fall garden plan.  I'll leave out the kale and broccoli but I'm still determined to try to raise cauliflower and brussel sprouts.  I'll just have to discipline myself not to each too much.  I've crossed carrots off the list too.  I think I shall miss garlic the most because I use it in almost every dish I prepare.  That and fresh and dried herbs.  Food will not taste the same without basil, thyme, parsley, etc.  Maybe I can find a new cuisine that avoids those standards and teaches me new cooking skills.

I'm surprised to learn that there is an INR blood test that can be self-administered.  I will ask about that because as it stands now I have to go to a Coumadine clinic to have it checked and for counseling.  That seems to be too much.  If I can take the test and report results and be contacted if things need adjustment, that sounds a better use of my time and that of the medical folks.

Again, thank you very much for the responses and advice.  I'm open to any more that might come to you.

rh
 

rabbithutch wrote:I'm surprised to learn that there is an INR blood test that can be self-administered.  I will ask about that because as it stands now I have to go to a Coumadine clinic to have it checked and for counseling.  That seems to be too much.  If I can take the test and report results and be contacted if things need adjustment, that sounds a better use of my time and that of the medical folks.

Rabbithutch - the INR testing machine and monitoring service is not cheap.  It costs me $138 per month.  But because my INR fluctuates so widely I was having to get it tested in the Doctors office once a week.  I missed 2 hours of work each week when I had to go to the doctors office so it was not much more expensive to have the test kit at home.


The company that services the testing machine and reports the results to the doctors office is called Cardionet.  This company is not in my network for insurance purposes so my insurance does not cover all of the costs.  Without any insurance it would be $500 per month.,

Thank you, yolos!

That seems a bit spendy for a retiree who only has to travel 3-quarters of a mile round trip to the coumadine clinic for an INR draw and consult.  I guess it is not an option for me but I'm glad it works for you.

Sorry you guys are having all these problems. I know warfarin can be potent and scary stuff.

Just to lighten the mood a little, I was reminded of an old Rodney Dangerfield joke, part of one of his "I don't get no respect, no respect at all" routines. To paraphrase:

I walked into the store and asked the lady behind the counter for some rat poison. She told me, "Should I wrap it, or do you wanna eat it here?"

I went through this as well after a simple operation.  I learned why I never bleed when cut, I just clot immediately.  A feature that s kept me away from using bandaids and I heal very rapidly but there is this down side of unwanted clots.

But what I wanted to chime in with is to emphasize to maintain in your diet the things you eat consistently.  Trying to avoid foods you love and eat most days makes for fluctuations when you cheat and unhappiness in your eating.  Better to adjust the dosage to reflect your consistent diet than try to eliminate all things with vit K in them that you love.  For example, you say you use garlic in cooking every day so keep using it but take a look at how much you use and try to keep that close to the same from day to day.

Here is to good health and good eating!

+1.  I wholeheartedly agree.  That was my point but I did not say it as well as Turan.  I have not changed what I eat but I do maintain consistency in the amount of each type of veggie I eat.

I had no idea about Wayfarin and Vit K!   All that good stuff that you have to monitor.  I had felt sorry for myself that i have to avoid gluten but I think I'll stop moaning.

that it is 83 degrees where I live but I am up in the mountains (Koke`e) today and it is a pleasant 68.  How delightful - and our garden perks on along down in the lowlands.

rabbithutch wrote:Thank you, each and every one, for the response and advice.  I've only been on this routine for 3 days now; so it is all new to me.

My diet has never been really heavy in any of the high vitamin K foods.  Periodically - as at New Year's Day - I would cook and eat collards with kale, together.  I also cook turnip greens and black-eyed peas in ham hock and eat it with baked ham.  I'm sure I overdo on that occasion, but that is not a regular diet for me.

Now that I have this blip on the radar screen - really the ECG screen - I have to rethink my Fall garden plan.  I'll leave out the kale and broccoli but I'm still determined to try to raise cauliflower and brussel sprouts.  I'll just have to discipline myself not to each too much.  I've crossed carrots off the list too.  I think I shall miss garlic the most because I use it in almost every dish I prepare.  That and fresh and dried herbs.  Food will not taste the same without basil, thyme, parsley, etc.  Maybe I can find a new cuisine that avoids those standards and teaches me new cooking skills.

I'm surprised to learn that there is an INR blood test that can be self-administered.  I will ask about that because as it stands now I have to go to a Coumadine clinic to have it checked and for counseling.  That seems to be too much.  If I can take the test and report results and be contacted if things need adjustment, that sounds a better use of my time and that of the medical folks.

Again, thank you very much for the responses and advice.  I'm open to any more that might come to you.

rh
 

I'd offer no matter how difficult it maybe financially or otherwise stay with the clinic for a long while , their testing's will be recorded and also be very accurate , home self tests will I doubt not be as accurate .
It seems the first three months or so seem to be critical for your body to adjust and stabilize.
and also for the monitoring to see if you have any residual problems .
Here in the UK the first 13 weeks were supposed to be the be all and end all of me taking it till just before the end of the course , a massive clot formed in my RH groin about a big as half a ducks egg with a big red pencil running through it.
Yep I needed to be on a higher dose as the recommended dose I'd been getting was showing everything was OK but in fact there was still a lot more clots in me that could break free in me at any time and snuff out my candle permanently .
 
Things came very close to Plantoids long rest on the compost heap , for some of the clot had reached my lungs and made me rather ill , I spent 8 days in hospital the first five days in a high dependency unit  getting stabilised and treated in a safe environment  .

 Remember what I said earlier on ... " Take your vit K stuff regular in moderation so the level is constant & consistently in the same range " ..we humans need it for healing and other healthy things


 Turan is spot on in her post , I'd send her some flowers for that post but the h emoticons don't have a big bunch , a real big bunch to do it .

plantoid wrote:

I'd offer no matter how difficult it maybe financially or otherwise stay with the clinic for a long while , their testing's will be recorded and also be very accurate , home self tests will I doubt not be as accurate .

I agree with plantoid that you should stay with the clinic for a long while. I stayed with the clinic about 10 years before my Doctor's office supplied me with a home self test machine.  For the first 4 weeks I took my machine in and tested myself at the doctor's clinic and the clinic also tested me to compare the results.  In every case, the test results were within .2 of each other (since my INR is supposed to stay between 2.5 and 3.5, that is an acceptable variation).  Also, when my INR spiked up to 4.7 one week, I immediately went into the clinic to have it retested.  Sure enough, my machine was accurate. I asked my doctor why he didn't give me the machine earlier and he said the price had just started to come down on the machines and they were now getting very accurate results.

I hope the home testing is covered by Medicare because in about 14 months I will be on medicare.  But I will be retiring then, so if medicare does not cover the machine, I will have plenty of time to go into the clinic every week to be tested.

I hear you folks loud and clear about staying with the program and staying close to the Anti Coagulation Clinic.  That process started today in fact.  I went in for a blood draw at 0900 hrs and had a call from an ACC nurse by 1530 hours with my reading.  After 4 days on 10 mg UID my INR is up to 1.5.  They upped the dosage by half a pill and will check again Monday.  I also have my first ACC interview after the early blood draw and INR test. 

Warfarin/Coumadine has the disadvantage that it does not act as quickly as to the newer drugs but its effects are reversible where the newer ones are not.  Also, W/C has been around and in widespread use for a long time; therefore most all doctors I'm likely to encounter will have had extensive experience with it. Many, obviously, have not had that experience with the newer drugs.  I opted to risk throwing a clot only because the a-flutter was corrected immediately with the cardio-ablation procedure.  There is no evidence of blood pooling in the atria. 

I guess I'm betting that I will get to thin blood (values between 2 and 3) quickly enough to take the risk.  It didn't hurt that my electro-physiology cardiologist was sanguine about the prospects of getting off W/C in a few months.  He has had great success with cases presenting very much like mine.  FWIW I'm being treated at one of the top 50 hospital complexes in the country.  It attracts and keeps the best in all fields.  I remain optimistic.

Thank you, again, for all the encouragement, sage advice, and for sharing your experiences.  I consider it a blessing to be in this group.

I've been on Coumadin for about 11 years now, and was getting my testing done at the Drs. office, finger stick.  About 6 months ago they said I needed to go to lab and get blood draw.  A problem nationwide with calibration, reliability, etc., etc.  So for the time being nothing but lab draws.  They said all finger stickers were out for a while.

HTH, Les

Les,
You were misinformed about no fingerstick PT/INR testing. I work in a medical facility with a lot of patients on coumadin and we test with a fingerstick machine. Maybe the particular machine your facility wad using had a problem?

Many times, the finger prick or blood being drawn depends on your insurance carrier changing their requirements and making the doctor's office use either the finger prick or draw blood and send to a lab.

Had my first consult with the Anti Coagulation Clinic pharmacist this morning.  I was told that for routine follow up, after I've had 2 consecutive therapeutic readings (2.0 to 3.0 INR), that the clinic staff would use finger pricks to do tests.  The finger pricks are quicker, less expensive and generally reliable; however, if they produce results out of the therapeutic range, full draws from the lab are ordered immediately.  Apparently the finger prick results can be affected more easily by diet and other factors and give unreliable readings sometimes - particularly if one is taking Lovenox (a brand name form of heparin) to supplement the coumadine or is on a high protein diet.