re: Random…Who still has all their organs?

My tonsils were removed... but I also have a part from a cadaver so it balances out.

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I take 2.5 mg Sun, Mon, Tue, Thu, Fr, Sat and 1 mg on Wed.

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Damn. I knew I took a pretty high dose of Coumadin. But apparently it’s really high compared to yours. I guess I have naturally thick blood.

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Mine seems to go up and down. The have to take blood to do the INR, because the finger stick doesn't work on me. My INR seems to go up and down. I have taken as much as 3.5 mg daily, never less than what I am now taking. I have blood drawn as often as weekly, occasionally it stabilizes for a few months and I go to a once a month blood draw.

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Thankfully, very rarely do they have to adjust my dosage. Usually if they do it just to take an extra dose for a day or two.

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Eleven years ago, my INR went really high and I developed a deep muscle bleed in y left thigh. The bleed compartmentalized and they did three surgeries in five days on it to stop the bleeding. Have a deep 16 inch scar down that thigh. Almost lost that leg during that adventure.

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I haven’t had anything like that since I came home from the hospital when they installed the valve. However, while I was still in the hospital following the surgery to install my mitral valve, they got my INR number way too high, so high in fact I bled out from the sutures in my heart. It happened seven days after my first surgery. Basically with every heart beat, I was pumping blood into my chest cavity, causing my lungs to be unable to expand which meant I could not breathe. Eventually I bled out and coded. That’s why I had the second surgery. They cracked me back open, drained most of the blood out of my chest cavity, reinserted the drain tubes, and gave me enough blood transfusions to get me going again. That wasn’t fun.

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Have no idea how many days/weeks I have spent in the hospital over the years since the valves replacement. As you mitral guys know, no hospital stay for valve problems is short. CCU and ICU time is tough on your family too since a lot of the time, you seem close ot death.

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It’s tough. Thankfully I’ve had a few scares, but no extended hospitalizations since Nov 2016 when I got the valve. I’ve had to be rushed to the hospital a few times due to my blood pressure bottoming out. But they were able to get my pressure back up and let me go home after a day or two.

Missing tonsils, wisdom teeth and a rib.

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Have no idea how many days/weeks I have spent in the hospital over the years since the valves replacement. As you mitral guys know, no hospital stay for valve problems is short.

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I guess I should count myself lucky, after my second surgery, which was a robot-assisted procedure through a port in my right side, I've had no issues. I'm much younger than the average patient for these things though, never smoked, exercised, ate healthy my whole life so I have come back strong from where I was after my first surgery. Lost over 30 lbs and looked like I came out of a concentration camp on that one.

In about 40 years, this same question will be asked and many Gen Zers will have to let them know that they do in fact still have a penis.

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Me too, 30 days in total but only maybe 2 weeks in the CICU. I don't remember much because it was a very sudden issue in my case, I was sedated for more than 10 days as they had to run a balloon pump to stabilize me enough to even have open heart surgery. Blood pressure dropped to 73/26. Not a good time but I made rapid recovery once I started cardiac rehab, then at the end of my rehab my cardiologist told me I had a leak, confirmed with a TEE, then referred me to BSW heart hospital in Plano where they replaced the mitral valve again. Vastly better experience that time around.

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Your expo is similar to mine, at least from it being a rough time. I was in my early 40s and started to feel like I was getting a cold. I went to my local dr. and he diagnosed me with asthma. He gave me a steroid shot and an inhaler. I came back to him a week later because the inhaler wasn’t doing anything. This time he said I had pneumonia. Gave me more steroids and sent me home. So for a couple months I thought I was fighting an ever worsening case of pneumonia. The only the one I could tell, symptom-wise was it was getting harder and harder to breathe. Then I started to swell. At first it was my ankles but soon it was all over, even my face. During this time I would go back to the dr as symptoms got worse. Each time it was more or stronger steroids and he explained away the swelling as a side effect of the steroids. He did tell me I needed to exercise more to lose weight, which I was rapidly putting on as I continued to swell. I was walking as much as 3-4 miles a day and this was in mid to late September. And I was miserable. I could not lay down because I couldn’t breathe. So I tried sleeping setting up, which didn’t work.

Finally, one day at work a co-worker noticed I looked like absolute death warmed over and advised I go see a cardiologist. I’d never considered my issue could be heart related because my main symptom was breathing. So I made an appointment to see a cardiologist. Actually got in to see him that same week. Turned out I was in stage 4 congestive heart failure and my heart refraction rate (I think that’s what it is called) was down to 10%, meaning each time my heart beat, only 10% of the blood actually pumped. They put me in the hospital and did an arterigram where they found the source of my issue was I had a cleft mitral valve. It had been there my whole life but was not bad enough to effect medical I hit middle age. They were astonished about (1) how my local dr had totally missed it and (2) I had not already fallen down dead or even had a heart attack.

Still, my prognosis was not good. My heart was very weak, all my organs had already shut down, and I wasn’t even digesting food any longer. They knew I had to have open heart surgery to replace my mitral valve, but I was so weak, my chances of surviving the surgery were not good. So they medicated me for a week, I dropped almost 70 lbs of fluid thanks to floresimide, which I still take, and they did the surgery to install this mechanical valve which I’m listening to right now going tick tick tick.

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We use to argue about who was a better running back or which broad had the nicest tits. Times are changing

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And we will have conversations about how taking a nice dump gets appreciated as you age and other shitty conversations.

there is some stupid shite on here

I didn't have any swelling, never felt out of breath. Diagnosed as having a bicuspid aortic valve 10 years earlier but cardiologist said I would probably be well into my 50's before needing surgery. I was working out side at my parent's house when I felt my heartbeat become suddenly vey erratic, the chordae that helped control the mitral valve had failed and basically my heart couldn't pump blood properly. Lucky my dad rushed me to the nearest ER, had I been at my house alone I probably would not have survived.