Pick Your Poison

Blood is supposed to clot. If it doesn't and you're bleeding, you keep bleeding. After my A-Fib episode in which my heart decided to change rhythms and upset all my doctors, They had a pow-wow and pincided (okay, decided) to put me on a blood thinner. I'm still not exactly sure why. I would understand if I had blocked arteries like Midtown Manhattan, but that wasn't the case. It was just my heart doing a foxtrot when it had been watusi-ing all these years. Frankly, I don't blame it; would you want to do the same dance for over half a century? So why does a funky rhythm warrant swallowing rat poison? And what made it even weirder was that Dr, Katzenelenbogen had been telling me for years not to

allow anyone to inject me with Heprin (yet another blood thinner;

don't these drug companies have anything else to do??) anytime I might be in the hospital, which in my case means every other Tuesday or so. I have a history of bleeding ulcers (from being an Excedrin junkie for years; see what happens when you're married?) and he was always very adamant about it. And here he was, jumping on the Coumadin bandwagon. Incidentally, Nuchi was once visiting me in the Rocky Zweig Memorial Wing of Maimonides when a nurse came in and started hanging a bag of something on my IV pole. Nuchi had the presence of mind to ask her what it was. This was quite a while ago, before patients routinely asked about what the supposed health professionals scurrying around them were downloading into their wretched bodies. When the nurse replied that the bag in question held Heprin, Nuchi informed her that I had bleeding ulcers and what are you trying to do, kill him? The nurse then realized that the Heprin was for the guy in the other bed. She mumbled some lame excuse, but she was definitely busted. With the possible exception of hanging around with me all these years, Nuchi is probably the smartest person I know. Remind me to tell you about the time she lost her engagement ring in a cadaver. But, as usual, I digress. In fact, I don't even remember what I was talking about. Oh yes, blood thinners. So I was on Coumadin and it's nasty stuff. If I even thought about banging into something, I would bruise like an overripe banana. As previously discussed, Coumadin is literally rat poison, so aside from all the fun side effects, there is also the ick factor: it's really creepy to know that this stuff that you're swallowing is the same stuff that has killed thousands, perhaps millions of defenseless rodents. Dirty rodents perhaps, but defenseless nonetheless. I desperately wanted to stop taking it. After another pow-wow, my cardiologist Dr. Plawes rather hesitantly switched me to Plavix. That made me feel better: at least Plavix has been heavily promoted and is prescribed more often than any other medication on the planet. Coincidentally, my son-in-law Amir used to work as a pharmaceutical rep and Plavix was what he sold. Of course if you've ever seen Amir, you know that he could sell ice to the eskimos. So I started on the Plavix a few weeks ago, assuming my body would no longer look like Ingemar Johansson's after Floyd Patterson got through with him. For all you youngins, that was an obscure boxing reference. Actually it's not obscure, it's just obscure to you. Anyway, no such luck. I still bruise at the slightest touch, in fact hematomas literally just pop up on their own with no coaxing from the edge of my desk necessary. Too*, I keep springing leaks. I tend to pick at anything on my body that's not supposed to be there; pimples, skin tags, warts, zlampoes, etc. Lately every pick is followed by a bleed that just goes on and on, like three or four band-aid's worth. So I guess Plavix is no groiseh metziah**, either. Moral of the story, kiddies? Stay healthy; otherwise you too could wind up poisoning yourself at your doctor's request. I'd offer some tips on how to stay healthy, but that would be tantamount to me offering marital advice, so I guess I'll pass.

* I know. Using "too" at the beginning of a sentence sounds terribly awkward and wrong gramatically. But one of my favorite authors, Richard Russo (I highly recommend his "Empire Falls" for which he won a Pulitzer) does it all the time and I've always wanted to try it, so there ya go.

** Groiseh Metziah = Literally, "big bargain".