I went to get my INR checked today at 9am.  At least I went to the lab where they took my blood.  Of course, they don't actually do the test there, they send it away to some other lab.  I asked if I could get a copy of the results.  They said I could come back at 2pm and they could give me the results.  But I had to go there to get them, they wouldn't send them to me.  So, they'll actually send the results to my doctor, but won't send them to me.  What is wrong with this picture?  Why don't they make the doctor travel to the lab to get the test results?  Why does the doctor have the convenience of having the results being sent to him and I don't? 

While I'm on that topic, whatever happened to having a real hospital that could do everything we needed?  Why should we have to travel different places to see a primary care doctor, a specialist, a lab for drawing blood, a lab for doing scans and who knows where else?  I'm gonna have to spend so much time running around for so many things and it should be unnecessary.  Home INR testing should be part of the whole procedure.  The system is broken, and it's going to remain broken.  Why?  Because there is no competition.  Health care is not a free market, so nobody bothers to innovate.  It's a  bureaucratic nightmare that is regulated by the government.  If competition were allowed, we'd actually see a convenient location where all the health care services we need could be found, thus saving energy, time and money since we wouldn't have to drive all over the freaking place trying to get stuff done. 

So I have no idea what my INR is now.  It could be high.. it could be low.  I could be about ready to stroke out.  Personally, I hope it's really freaking high right now because I'm not enjoying the side effects of this crap.  My joints ache, my stomach is upset most of the time and I bruise at the drop of a hat.  My head feels foggy, like I can't concentrate.  So if my INR is high, then I'll be able to take less of this poison. 

And I'm still not convinced that my body wouldn't finish healing the clot on its own.  i've had the stupid thing for probably 6 months now and it has slowly been getting better.  Of course the doctors are all giving me horror stories about how since the clot is so old it'll probably never go away.  Thing is, I'm convinced probably everybody out there has a clot in their veins somewhere.  They just have no symptoms and have had no doctor poking and prodding looking for one.  It seems everywhere you look now, somebody has a clot.  I say let the clot break free and kill me.  Then I won't have to keep putting up with all this bullshit.

But, chances are, it'd just get stuck in my brain and make me retarded.  So I guess I'll buy into the fear factory propaganda farm created by the health care industry and jump through their hoops till the clot is gone.  Just don't expect me to do it graciously. 

Maybe my outlook will change with time, but for now, I'm just extremely annoyed by the inefficiency of the whole system.  And annoyed that warfarin is the best drug scientists have been able to come up with to fight this problem.  And annoyed that I even have a damn clot to start with.