When the Doctor's away, you're healthier!

I can easily believe this. After my last hospitalization a couple of years back, I was put on some new drugs, one of which was Xarelto (Rivaroxaban) for controlling possible blood-clotting due to atrial fibrillation. In the first place, I didn't go to the hospital because of ongoing heart problems, I went because I had difficulty breathing because of pneumonia. This other stuff was discovered by a hotshot young assistant to the resident cardiologist, on a fishing expedition during which I had an ultrasound imaging of the heart, following which our boy decided to put me on Xarelto. 

Xarelto is expensive, and it has some nasty side-effects, including things like large 'blood blisters' inside my cheeks and upper lip, and tests revealed that I was also showing occult blood in samples of urine and feces. So this Xarelto was thinning my blood a little too much, and I was losing some of it where I normally would not. When I discovered this, I promptly quit the Xarelto, waited about a month and a half to be sure it had all cleared out of my system, and then got another set of tests for that occult blood. Results were negative, and my vitals are reading quite normally without it. As in 117/68 with a rate of 69, or 119/57 with a rate of 63. Most 80-somethings like me would consider those numbers just about ideal, and not many of us have them.

I should add that I'm still on Bisoprolol, the beta blocker which acts to regulate the heart's built-in timer, and indirectly by doing so, controlling the BP, and it seems to be a lot more useful than the Xarelto. And it's a lot cheaper, too.

So what do I recommend? Get yourself the latest version of The Merck Manual, now being called The Merck Manual Home Health Handbook (formerly The Merck Manual of Medical Information) and avail yourself of a "second opinion" or maybe a first opinion...just because... Because doctors bury their mistakes!