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You can buy it yourself, I've been shopping and have found for $450 or so. That's not an option for everybody.

I think the point about rural isn't too far off, at least from what I'm experiencing so far. Today's my 7 week anniversary (yay!) and I was reminded now by the second Coumadin clinic I've visited that I'm not allowed to get a Coaguchek order from my PCP unless I 1) change my PCP, or 2) I wait...

I live in pretty rural northeast Maryland now and I can confirm. Everyone around here has a “southern accent”. (not exactly…)

Ignoring the conversation about offensiveness… I’m new to this group but my impression is that it’s centered on being helpful, supportive, and most of all educating others, especially us newbies. So it seems a bit hypocritical for some people to judge and even condemn people who clearly needed...

My dreaded first sneeze just came five minutes ago on my 6 week surgery anniversary. Didn’t hurt much at all. I guess all that hard work holding off sneezing all this time paid off.

It’s not just Bavaria, it’s every surgeon in the entire state! https://www.phc4.org/reports/cabg/16/

Seconded. Not from personal experience, but because I'm a member of the faculty at Johns Hopkins Medicine and I hear all the time about how much he's missed here. Everybody acknowledges it was a major loss to Johns Hopkins to lose him to MGH. I even have colleagues who send their loved ones...

Thanks, this is helpful. One thing I don't understand though is that my post-surgical gradients are about the same as my gradients from a year or two ago, and those ultimately were associated with the processes that led to my enlarged aorta, LV hypertrophy, etc. Would that therefore imply that...

So I met with my cardiologist today who said he is absolutely not worried about the gradient. He didn’t tell me why, but ok. My EKG came back as abnormal with the message “possible inferior infarct” in the signed out report, which is scary as hell. The cardiologist said EKG abnormalities are...

This thread was really helpful to me before surgery, so here's my contribution nearly 6 weeks after my surgery. :) 1) Unlike some of the others, I had practically no pain. I mean, trying to cough, trying to lift things or do anything beyond my capabilities hurt, but when I wasn't doing...

Did your cardiologist indicate why it’s progressively getting worse? I would think with a mechanical valve things shouldn’t change that drastically over time. Unless you’re getting progressive hupertrophy of the ventricle or something like that?

I’m 4 weeks post AVR and ascending graft. I had my first echo yesterday and it revealed a mean transvalvular gradient of 24 (peak 40). An improvement over my presurgical values of 51 (peak 77) but still high as far as I can tell. Valve area is 1.6 which seems ok. Should I be concerned? As...

My memory may not be 100% on this. But they didn’t start the warfarin until day 4 or 5 because I was in the ICU and they don’t start until step down. The step down delay was because they didn’t have enough beds, not because I needed icu. I believe it was 5mg for 2 days once I hit step down. My...

So I’ve been home a couple days now. Physically I feel fine, very little pain really, but haven’t sneezed yet, so.. Mentally I still feel like I’m in a fog even though I’m not taking any pain relief other than Tylenol. Had my INR checked yesterday and I’m at 1.9. I go in tomorrow so hopefully...

Amy, I was thinking of you this morning when I convinced the fellow to increase the dose to 7.5 after he said he was going to just stick with 6 and hope it goes up. Thank you.

I think (hope) I’m getting discharged tomorrow. I see the sticky thread about questions to ask your surgeon before surgery but don’t see one for after surgery. Since I’ll be one of the many traveling home from CC and may not have the opportunity to get answers to some of these questions with my...

How was the lovenox? They mentioned that for me.

Thanks that’s helpful to know. I’ve been on metoprolol for a few years so I’m thinking that may not be the culprit here. Fortunately I’m down to just one aura today.

INR 1.7 again this morning. And for the fourth straight day, they seem unwilling to up the dose beyond 6 again.

And now blood in urine. Why? Heparin? I feel like my body is trying to nickel and dime me into a two week stay.