A phrase that kept going through my head in the weeks before I had my tricuspid valve replaced:
"That which does not kill you..."
Perhaps some of these drugs that we are on indeffinitely are just that, powerful heart medications that in a "normal, heart-healthy" person would likely kill them or at least do great harm, but for us, maintain life.
Many of these drugs haven't really been around long enough to know long-term implications with any certainty. It's getting better as people get older, but who knows what a life time of diuretic use will do to someone who started diuretic therapy in their late teens and is now 80+ years old? What kind of effect would that have on kidney function, the liver, endrocrine system? We know some drugs like amiodarone are best used for short periods of time, if it all, and only when absolutely neccesary. other drugs don't eem to have immediate consequences like amiodarone, but a life-time of use?
I'm on spironolactone which, among other things, causes breast enlargment in men and skin sensitivities. The breast thing aside, does spironolactone make me more succesptible to skin cancer? I tan MUCH faster now and will easily burn if out in the sun without protection for less than half an hour. My furosemide (lasix) depletes the potassium in my system. I have to compensate for it in part through the spironolactone and by eating foods high in potassium. Those levels fluctuate a lot in my body, what kind of an effect does THAT have long term?
And of course, aside from all of that, no one past the age of about 40 something has the "breed" of transposition of the great vessels that I have. It wasn't fixable before the mid-sixties. I've survived the BIG complication the technique used to "reconfigure" my heart carries, des that mean I'm "home free" now as long as I keep to my meds and take care of myself, or am I headed for more surgery or a heart transplant down the road? No one can say, no one's lived into "old age" with what I have....
From all that I've seen anticoagulation therapy (coumadin) seems fairly safe so long as you "endure" frequent monitoring and keep up with your medications. Going off anticoagulation seems to entail a much greater risk than staying on it and any side-benefit the medication might provide is almost "inccidental" to me at least. Ok, so maybe it will stave off dementia. that's never been a problem in my family, usually such conditions are hereditary.
Oh, and my family has a long list of decendants that have lived well into their 80's and 90's. My mother's parents are still alive and fairing well at 92 and 95.
I'm the only one in the family (within the last 100 years at least) that's had a heart condition like the one I was born with. Congenital heart defects are non-exisitant in my family otherwise. Sometimes such things run through generations, I appear to be an anomaly.
