Warfarin and school

[Emma]

Hi everyone,
Chloe is 5 in October (which makes me feel so old!!! lol) and she will be starting school 3 weeks tomorrow and I am getting more and more nervous about it - cuts and bumps in the playground etc with her having had a MVR and being on warfarin.
I just wondered if anyone has gone through school being on warfarin and did they have any problems with it? I mean obviously she's going to bump herself frmo time to time. She always has done, as children do, and (touch wood!) other than a couple of trips to A&E she's been fine with them. I am a teacher at the school she's going to so thats an advantage anyway as I'm on hand if her teacher's not sure about anything (her not taking part in ball games for eg), but is there anything else specifically you did extra or didn't do at school because of warfarin/coumadin restrictions?

Thanks for your help
Emma and Chloe
xxx

 

[Ross]

It sounds like someone has been telling you tales of how Coumadin patients bleed to death from the slighest things. Let me settle this for you. It's mostly all bogus disinformation! The most that will happen if cuts occur (Minor of course) is that she'll bleed a little longer then usual. The bleeding will be controlled and stopped just the same as before. It's not a big deal. Bruising shouldn't be a big deal either. Some people bruise just by touching them, others have to really work at it to get anything.

She will be just fine. Your suffering more then she ever will, with people telling you garbage about this medication.

 

[Guest]

I would not stop her from doing anything that she wants to do. As I said int he other post, I have taken care of 7 children on warfarin and they are remarkably resilient. If a ball game is too dangerous for her, then none of the kids should be allowed to play that rough. My guess is that her pulmonary hypertension will cause her more limitation than the warfarin will. Massachusetts General hospital only admitted 120-some people over an 11 year period with bleeding into the brain from warfarin. If that is all that a hospital of that size sees it is very unlikely to happen to Chloe. People survive gunshot wounds every day. No accident on a school playground is likely to cause more bleeding (even with warfarin) than that. You are in a major metro area with medical care close at hand not some remote area where there is no telephone.

Another story - I was driving in Portsmouth once (opposite side of the road from what I am used too) and some people stepped out in front of me. The car had a manual transmission and I was used to automatic. As I slammed on the brakes and stepped on the clutch I reached down with my right hand (the gear shift hand in the US) and promptly rolled down the window. Well that killed the engine. So I grabbed for the key to start the motor but got ahold of the windshield washer. So there I sat in the city center of Portsmouth with a stalled car holding up traffic and washing my windshield!! Lots of horn honking resulted.

 

[Emma]

thankyou

thankyou

Ross and Al,
Thankyou for your replies. They really have made me feel a lot easier about it all!
I am generally a very laid back person and am quite relaxed about what she does and i can honestly say i have never stopped her doing anything or going on anything (rides etc - ooh, tiny lie - other than 1 very crowded bouncy castle where i could just see a big banged head coming up!) because of her condition.
This school thing had just got me a bit worked up as the doctors over here make it sound like such a terrible thing for a child to be on warfarin that i asuumed that maybe i should be more worried about it than i am.
Obviously i do watch her carefully and i've made sure her teacher is well aware of the warfarin situation but i am determined that when she gets to adulthood she won't resent us or be able to say that mum and dad held her back from anything that we didn't really have to, 'cos we wrapped her in cotton wool too much!

Thankyou again for replying to me
Love Emma
xxx
PS - Al, i replied to your bit about the traffic here, in my other post in the INR range thread - sorry about that.

 

[Guest]

I had one of my students interview parents/grandparents of children on warfarin and write it up. You can read it at http://www.warfarinfo.com/pediatrics.htm