I am referring to the glory that is the blood-thinner, which I am now taking daily and slowly calibrating dosage for on a weekly basis. Coumadin, or ‘generic Warfarin’. Fun times. How I came to be taking this starts with a story of feeling fired up to cook a big ol’ pot of spaghetti sauce, one Saturday evening in October, after feeling kinda droopy and pooped for a week (those symptoms were care of chemo that week.)
So I was at the kitchen counter, being supervised by Pancho who was as usual convinced I was prepping food for him and Lucy, and after chopping through some peppers, garlic and onions I was reaching for the mushrooms… And found I was totally out of breath and kinda shaky. Sort of like I had been running to catch the bus for five blocks or something equally foolish. And I was in a cold sweat. Chopping mushrooms should not be running a marathon. The dood had to help me get across the room to have a seat in the living room, Pancho sat and pouted, and I called the advice nurse who advised me to get to an ER post haste.
A CT scan revealed a pulmonary embolism in one of my lungs, and so began a week of injected blood thinners twice a day, and gradual doses of coumadin in the evenings. And here is where I add that chemo belatedly started fucking with my appetite and food preferences, which stinks when the hospital one is stuck in actually cooks good grub for its patients and staffers. Normally? I’m one of those folks barbed by jokes like, “Do you look at a menu and say ‘yes’?” Ah well, it is s l o w l y passing
Coumadin, though. Coumadin, let me count the ways it makes cooking and functioning a challenge as it saves your life. I have a lengthy list of foods that are now semi-verboten, thanks to their vit. K content. I live for brassicas like cabbage, broccoli, and other green leafies like chards, lettuces, kale, and various greens, but they’re high in K which promotes platelet production. Pfffft. It is perfectly livable of course, but makes me grumble a bit. Then we get to it being an energy sink. I could not get a straight answer on it being a brain and body drain until one of the infusion nurses over in chemo told me it can weaken the heck out of patients when the dosage is being worked out. That afternoon nap goes from 1 hr to 2 or 3, in other words. Perfectly livable, and I love sleep and all, but the tiredness can be a drag.
Hope that didn’t sound too whiny, but it is an update
As far as can be determined, the chemo is still shrinking the cancer, woohoo. And that’s the bigger concern anyway.
