A “shocking” turn of events

Sandra Smith
Sep 19, 2018
2 min read

On Friday, September 14th, I had an appointment with my cardiologist at the University of Utah. During that appointment he detected heart flutter (irregular heart rhythm). Heart flutter can cause a stroke if not treated. They immediately decided to admit me to the hospital and put me on a heparin drip. After conferring with my doctors at Stanford, they decided to perform a procedure to shock my heart back into a normal rhythm. That procedure was done early Saturday afternoon and appears to be successful. I was released Sunday morning with a couple hours to see Zoe before I needed to catch my flight to Stanford for transplant clinic appointments on Monday.

Well, I'm still in California. Stanford didn’t like the blood thinner that the University of Utah put me on over the weekend to address the heart flutter so I was admitted back into the hospital. Why they didn’t insist on that over the weekend when the U consulted with them is beyond me. In order to change me over to Warfarin from Eliquis, they have to put me on IV Heparin for a day which can only happen in hospital so looks like I’m spending at least 3 more days at Stanford in the hospital while they take me off Eliques and put me on IV Heparin, monitor, and then move me to Warfarin, and monitor some more.

I’ll be honest in saying I was very disappointed and discouraged when being informed that I would not be making my flight home and instead being subjected to multiple needle pokes. My arms are completely covered in bruises.