Hi
Enigmalady777;n883181 said:
I'm finally off the Lovenox as of the end of last week when my INR was at 3.2.
for Gods sake, why didn't they take you off as soon as you were over 2?
Now the Coumadin clinic has me taking a higher dosage pill (5 mg) and wanted me to take 2 and a half pills (12.5 mg). I did this starting this past Monday and it pushed my INR up to 4.2! Too high! Had me lower the dosage to 10 mg and it's still 4.1 as of yesterday.
firstly the pill size isn't an issue, its the actual dose you took. So if its 5 x 1mg tablet or 1 x 5mg tablet its all the same.
In contrast to Superman I have some objections to the weekly dose thinking, specifically because there is nothing in it which promotes a consistent dose (which you then have to work back to a daily dose anyway in order to take it).
So your information is a bit "scattered" and I'd like to help but I'd need to know what dose you were taking (and if it varied give me that information too) and what your INR's were. If you could do that in a date ordered list then I'm sure we could all be of more help. Eg
1st , 5mg
2nd , 5mg
3rd, 5mg inr reading = 3
something logical and ordered like that. If you were on the same daily dose then just summarise that as "this week 5mg daily" and the INR readings
but I have read that Coumadin can stay in your system for as long as 60 hours, so I am possibly seeing the higher results as residual from the higher dosage maybe? It's frustrating to say the least.
that's not far wrong, the "half life" of warfarin in your system is about 48 hours (and depending on the person can vary from 20 to 60). Then there is the time that it takes for a change to fully appear, which can be delayed by 2 or 3 days (depending, perhaps more or less).
Its these lags which make it harder for people (especially dumbasses like clinics) to work out what's going on and what to do.
Let us know and we'll see what we can offer in the way of help.
BUT -> the short answer is this: if you're INR is over range you need a little less warfarin
not more.