...any more.
Treatment for the blood clot in my leg has involved two drugs: a pill (Coumadin) and a self-administered injection (Lovenox). Thus, I had been "shooting" myself with Lovenox for 4 or 5 days, twice a day. It took a bit of training, but it turns out to be rather straightforward -- and completely painless. You pinch some skin at your "love handles" so that you have an inch or so of "adipose tissue." (And doesn't that sound better than "fat"?) And lift it a bit to make sure you don't have any muscle tissue in your grasp. Then you wipe the area clean with an alcohol-swab, and take the syringe and plunge it straight down into the skin. And there is absolutely no pain!! Amazing! Press the plunger all the way, pull the needle out and you're done!
The trick with treating serious blood clots is to thin the blood enough to allow the clot to clear itself without thinning the blood so much that it won't respond adequately to cuts or bruises. And there is (no surprise here...) a "magic number" that tests look for to confirm that your blood is at just the right thinness. When you've achieved that -- using the two aforementioned drugs -- the doc takes you off the Lovenox and continues you on the Coumadin for a couple of months or so.
AND on the first blood test to check on my blood thinness (which happened yesterday), the results showed that I had plonked onto that magic thinness number almost exactly. So no more "shooting" should be necessary.
Another small victory. We count 'em all, thank you.
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ReplyDeleteI think this a fine sign that your body is working perfectly. The fine signs are everywhere -- that is a big part of why this blog has become such a wellspring of hope.