“I’m afraid to look” is a phrase that can pop up in my mind, most recently right before I started writing this post.
“I’m afraid to look,” I thought, before I used my home monitor to discover my INR results after returning home from Halifax, where I was away from my usual routine. “I’m afraid to look,” I thought, as a good INR range for me is between 3.0 – 3.5, remembering how a year ago, when I was on vacation and away from my usual routine, I had a mini-stroke because my INR range was too low (2.4).
Before I conducted the home test this morning, I decided to counteract “I’m afraid to look” with “I need to look and whatever it is, I’ll deal with it.”
I realized that “I’m afraid to look” is a very old thought and feeling for me, related to a traumatic experience I had when I was 10 years old in the hospital, right after my first cardiac pacemaker implant. Nobody told me the pacemaker was huge and was “going to stick out like a sore thumb” — a description my surgeon shared with my parents but neglected to share with me. When I first saw my pacemaker after a nurse removed the bandages, I was afraid and asked, “What’s that?” The nurse, for whatever reason, lied to me and said “That’s your hip, swollen from the surgery.” My fear went away, temporarily. However, when a doctor removed the bandages a day or so later, I looked and was afraid to see the big protrusion still there. I asked again “What’s that?” and the doctor said, very casually, without any questions or further explanations, “That’s your pacemaker.”
I assume that doctors and nurses today would handle that situation much better with a child, so that child wouldn’t grow up being afraid to look.
When I did my INR test this morning, I decided I would not be afraid to look and also — for the first time — take some pictures of the process. I hope you’re not afraid to look at these four photos. (If you’re very squeamish about blood, you might want to scroll quickly past them.)
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Yay! 3.1 is a great number for me and better than my INR number two weeks ago, which was high. My coagulation nurse and I decided not to adjust my medication before my trip, because we were afraid that might result in my INR becoming dangerously low again.
Is anyone afraid to look at my other images for today?
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It looks like the Daily Bitch is afraid to look outside a six-foot radius.
Afraid to look on YouTube for “afraid to look”? I need to look and whatever it is, we’ll deal with it (here and here).
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Thanks to all who were not afraid to look at today’s post, including YOU!
