Of Life and Blood Clots

Went to the Coumadin clinic today. My INR is too low, meaning I'm clotting too thick (well, normal for someone who doesn't have a pulmonary embolism). I know it's because I haven't taken it for 3 days. That's only because I need to get these teeth pulled (that broke during pregnancy and are abscessed and hurting badly)and the dentist said that I need to be off of the Coumadin for a week before I can get dental work done. It's been 5 months since the PE so I figured I could do it. Well, the pharmacist says that I can't do that unless a new scan shows that the clot is gone so she put me back on self-administered Lovenox shots in my belly. Apparently, it's okay to get dental work on the Lovenox but not the Coumadin. I think I'm going to postpone the extractions. I went upstairs tonight to do the shots and I started feeling all sick inside and chickened out. So I just took a dose of Coumadin and will have to endure the toothache. I kept thinking, if I can't do the shots, I have to do the Coumadin. I can't take the chance. I need to do it for my family. I can't risk my life. They need me.

I should do a scrapbook page on all the sacrifices my body has made in order to bear and bring those children into the world (not to mention the saggy boobs from nursing and the bags under my eyes from not getting much sleep) and leave the page out in the open when they're giving me a hard time. lol

Last night, when I was doing my midnight rounds, checking on each child...making sure they were covered and safe, and to kiss their foreheads and say I love you (same routine almost every night since they were old enough to sleep in their own beds), I got choked up and prayed that God wouldn't let anything happen to me, that He would spare my life, because they needed me. I really started crying when I thought of them losing me. It was a sobering thought. It's amazing how a near-death experience can make you face your own mortality and time-wasting habits. When Aidan was still at Duke and shortly after, I was popping out scrapbook pages, sometimes 3 a day. People joked about my Wonder Woman nickname and were amazed that I had jumped back into scrapping so quickly. The truth of the matter is that I had a sense of urgency, thinking....what do I want them to remember? I had so many pages that weren't completed and pictures that needed to be documented. I would literally be scrapping like there was no tomorrow. Being told that you were lucky to survive a pulmonary embolism (& that 1 in 10 people die within the first hour) will change your perspective and make you reevaluate what's really important in life.