baradonai
Well-known member
It's been nine years since I had my mitral valve replaced with a St. Jude. Got INR/warfarin dosage stabilized fairly soon thereafter and short of a handful of warfarin mg. adjustments to coincide with my weight loss, I've almost been oblivious that I had the surgery.
I've hit that time in life where you're supposed to have a colon exam. I know too many people who have died a horrible death from colon cancer so I knew I would definitely have the exam. I also knew that this would be a slightly bigger deal than what everyone else deals with.
Primary Dr. referred me to a Dr. that does these sort of things. On our first consult, I could tell he didn't like me on warfarin one bit. Steered me to have a barium enema/Xray procedure instead. Not pleasant at all. And guess what...they found a couple polyps they want to remove. So I get to have the regular colonoscopy two weeks later! Gambled and lost. I was so hoping I wouldn't have to do the cleansing drink again for another 5 years.
Then I learned that my Primary didn't want to oversee my lovenox. He and the colon dr. wanted my cardiac dr. to handle that. Ok contact cardiac's office and at first they didn't want to fool with it either. Thought the Colon dr. should do it. Boy! was that making me feel confident. Learned the Cardiac dr. had a coumadin clinic operating out of his office so it seemed to make sense that they should do it. They agreed, but only if I let them handle my warfarin monitoring from now on, and wrote the script for the lovenox. One page of instructions xeroxed out of the lovenox manual was included with the box of shots. Sheesh.
The cardiac/coumadin clinic people are acting like this is no big deal, and I guess it's not. Colon people are a little more anxious. Just got a call from their nurse to be sure I had a lovenox instruction lesson from cardiac/coumadin and I said I had not. She was nice enough to run me through the procedure and told me to call her back with questions. I'm watching some youtube videos today and poking around here for some lovenox tips and tricks. First shot is tonight. Procedure Monday.
Boy, hope I can go another 9 years without having to think about stuff like this. Wish me luck!
I've hit that time in life where you're supposed to have a colon exam. I know too many people who have died a horrible death from colon cancer so I knew I would definitely have the exam. I also knew that this would be a slightly bigger deal than what everyone else deals with.
Primary Dr. referred me to a Dr. that does these sort of things. On our first consult, I could tell he didn't like me on warfarin one bit. Steered me to have a barium enema/Xray procedure instead. Not pleasant at all. And guess what...they found a couple polyps they want to remove. So I get to have the regular colonoscopy two weeks later! Gambled and lost. I was so hoping I wouldn't have to do the cleansing drink again for another 5 years.
Then I learned that my Primary didn't want to oversee my lovenox. He and the colon dr. wanted my cardiac dr. to handle that. Ok contact cardiac's office and at first they didn't want to fool with it either. Thought the Colon dr. should do it. Boy! was that making me feel confident. Learned the Cardiac dr. had a coumadin clinic operating out of his office so it seemed to make sense that they should do it. They agreed, but only if I let them handle my warfarin monitoring from now on, and wrote the script for the lovenox. One page of instructions xeroxed out of the lovenox manual was included with the box of shots. Sheesh.
The cardiac/coumadin clinic people are acting like this is no big deal, and I guess it's not. Colon people are a little more anxious. Just got a call from their nurse to be sure I had a lovenox instruction lesson from cardiac/coumadin and I said I had not. She was nice enough to run me through the procedure and told me to call her back with questions. I'm watching some youtube videos today and poking around here for some lovenox tips and tricks. First shot is tonight. Procedure Monday.
Boy, hope I can go another 9 years without having to think about stuff like this. Wish me luck!
