Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The Blood Chronicles


Ok, so may I please rant a bit about the tragic and dilapidated system that is medical insurance and blood tests? First of all, my insurance will only pay for me to have an arm draw at the nasty, dirty, icky, not-so-sterile blood lab. I have to have an arm draw even though a finger prick would suffice, heaven forbid they update their equipment. I am now a "regular" and they don't even ask me to come to the window anymore. I have "my lady" Maria who is the least masochistic of the phlebotomists. Only Maria in her thick Cuban accent will say, "Dee-ya! blah blah blah...really long story that I cannot understand a word of and never know if I should laugh at the end or not." I go to the lab before work and sit in the waiting room and attempt to put on my makeup in my teenie compact mirror without getting coughed on. My blood levels are starting to level out (yay!) but we had a nice scare last week. We refer to it as the "South Beach Incident". One doctor put me on it and the other one freaked out. For the record, it is never good for one doctor to say of another, "Is she a complete idiot?!?!" So now I am banned from all foods containing Vitamin K (surprisingly it thickens your blood which would counteract my Coumadin and cause a blood clot, which I've heard is kind of a bad thing). Vitamin K is in anything healthy I've decided so I included a picture of me taken this morning on my new diet.

 
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