It was absolutely due to not taking my meds. But that had been intentional. I was due for a colonoscopy, and the instruction sheet for that said to cease taking any blood-thinning medicine ten days before the colonoscopy. After my trip to the ER and the next day angioplasty to clear out the stent, the cardiologist raised hell with the colonoscopy clinic. It seems the artery-clogging white platelets, whose regeneration is inhibited by blood thinners, need about ten days to reach a level where they can fully block an artery if the patient stops taking the meds. One baby aspirin a day is usually enough. I noticed that five years later, when I returned for my next colonoscopy, the instruction sheet said to go off the blood thinning med for five days, not ten. The cadio team said zero was preferable, but five days was probably not dangerous.
It’s astounding to me how one patient’s experience can affect a whole area of medicine. This is not my first time.
About 30 years ago, I had an outer ear infection (pseudomonas) that just would not go away. I was in the USA at the time. One of the treatments I was prescribed was to periodically rinse the affected ear with vinegar and some alcohol solution they gave me. One time, I got distracted, forgot the alcohol until hours later. Less than two hours after that, the two green lumps fell out of my ear, and the infection was gone. I went back to the clinic to tell them what happened, and asked if maybe the opposite pH factors of the vinegar and alcohol weren’t canceling each other out, and turning the simultaneous combination effectively into just water. The docs looked like a light bulb had just lit up, and said that made perfect sense, and they couldn’t believe no one had thought of that. It apparently made the JAMA (!!!). Even the docs who know everything don’t always know everything. Sometimes they need an ignorant patient like me to help them out.
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