update

[Guest guest]

Nothing new cardiac-wise, but might have some relevance to those taking coumadin.

On Saturday I started getting short of breath, and on sunday I keeled over in the bathroom and voided. Martha called 9-11 and I went to the local hospital (three blocks away). I had lost about two thirds of my blood supply and was still bleeding.

the cause was belieed to be my coumadin, which despite taking regularly,has a varying effect on the clotting levels. I was off the chart. They did not know, however, the bleeding site or f the site was the cause and only exasperated by the coumadin. I was air-evaced to Stanford.

A complete GI series was scheduled as soon as I stopped bleeding and my blood pressure returned to normal (It had been down to 60/30.) They discovered a "polyp farm starting in my lower intestine which they "harvested" during the colonoscopy. I will have to have colonoscopies every nine months or so from now on. in the middle GI tract they found an unidentified polyp which they will treat or remove next week, and that was believed to be the source of the bleeding. I recieived 16 units of blood/plasma while there and was released Wednesday. I still have stamina problems, but they are getting better daily. No cardiac interaction occurred beyond what is stated above.

I hve learned now that black stools can be as bad as red ones, and maybe worse. Excessive shortness of breath is important too. I also learned that we ers are great patients for the docs becaue we know so much about our history and are used to being precise in our descriptions. Makes the care that much more effective.

Stanford was great. I had been in UCLA years ago and the medical care there was great, and I cannot say Stanford was beter in that regard. but as a well run hospital, I culd find absolutely nothing at Stanford that did not run like a perfectly designed, built and maintained machine. The only complaint I had was the GoLightly which although now mildly pineapple-flavored is worse than the procedure by a lot.

Martha and I are raising two granddaughters (9 and 4) and I worried about them, and also if the stress when i got home of being a 66 year old ad-hoc parent with a cardiac history and recent hospitalization would be too difficult. Wrong! The gorls make me feel better than any meds I've ever taken. Besides that, I needed to catch up on SpongeBob.

From Califronia where mobsters worry about stool pigeons and statues worry about pigeon stool.

Bill