Coumadin What to Do if You Can’t Stop Bleeding (Even Slightly)
To anyone who is on the blood thinner medication Coumadin (generic name warfarin), I just thought I’d share my experiences of what to do if you can’t stop bleeding even slightly especially on weekends or late at night, if you can’t reach your regular Doctor and/or Cardiologist.
Until this weekend, after being on Coumadin for 5 years, I never had any accidental bleeding that lasted for more than 45 minutes (and that occurred when I cut my gums flossing my teeth). Well somehow last Friday Night, I must accidentally have cut my gum above a tooth using my new Oral B Toothbrush as I probably pressed against the tooth and gum too hard. I didn’t bleed or anything when it must have happened, in fact I didn’t notice anything was wrong and didn’t feel the worse. When I woke up in the morning I felt fine when I then felt what I thought was a piece of food in my mouth. I put my tongue on it to take it out, I was half asleep, and I noticed that there was blood on my tongue. I thought I had bitten my tongue and went to the bathroom to take a look in the mirror. To my astonishment the inside of my mouth was filled with blood including some small blood clumps that were like jello. I spit it all out and cleared my mouth of all of it using water and rinsing and found that this all came from one cut/irritated spot of gum over just one tooth. Obviously if I wasn’t on Coumadin this wouldn’t have happened.
I immediately put gauze over it and applied pressure and the blood didn’t go through the gauze so it looked like it was contained. The problem was after I removed the gauze it would start to bleed again within 2 minutes, not profusely, but it was still bleeding. I repeated the process several times and the same thing happened each time. I then tried wet bags of black tea instead of gauze and the results were slightly better. Bleeding would be contained but this time after 5 minutes blood would continue trickling. After about 5 hours of this, I decided to call Urgent Care After Hours Center just to find out if I should just stop taking Coumadin that day. I was advised in no uncertain terms that if I was bleeding after 3 Hours, even lightly, I needed to come in immediately to see an Urgent Care physician and have my blood drawn to see if my Coumadin inr level needed immediate adjustment. This urgent care center somehow was able to get lab results after 5 hours. So I came in, my sister thought I was nuts but I just wasn’t about to take a chance on anything, and by that time the bleeding had finally stopped. The Urgent Care Doctor looked at my gum and thought it was a gum injury, they drew my blood and found out that my Coumadin level didn’t need adjustment and I was told to go ahead and take the amount of Coumadin prescribed that day. On Monday I called the Nurse who administers my Coumadin program and she said that I did the right thing. Bottom line was, if I was bleeding even lightly for more than 3 hours, I needed to go to a Doctor right away and have my blood drawn and have my Coumadin level adjusted immediately.
If you are on Coumadin and you can’t stop the bleeding even if its very light, the first thing you should immediately do of course is contact your Doctor and find out what your Doctor wants you to do. If its on the Weekend or in the evening, I recommend first you to talk to your Doctor ahead of time so you have a plan of what to do if it actually happens and find out after how many hours your Doctor thinks there may be a problem. In my case it is 3 hours, your Doctor may think otherwise. The bottom line is to have some kind of contingency plan in place if this ever happens to you. I’d also keep gauze pads at home as well as black tea bags (anything other than black tea probably won’t work as Black tea contain tannins which clot blood) to try to stop the bleeding by holding it against the spot where its bleeding and applying pressure for 20 minutes or so and repeating when necessary. Note, I am not a Doctor, and you should discuss this with your Doctor as what works for me won’t necessarily work for you. The main thing to remember is even if its light trickle type bleeding if it continues for an excessive level of time, in my case, 3 hours, you need to go to a Doctor immediately and have it checked out. Hopefully this won’t ever happen to you.
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