Hi Karren,
First, welcome to Life After DVT and sorry you have to be here. You are welcome, the reason this site was put together was specially meant for outpatients like ourselves who had questions that nobody seemed to be able to answer or that you had to search for days for answers, so we figured that if we could gather all the information that we have found in our own searches, it could serve for other DVT/PE outpatients, like yourself.
For the INR, the way it works is as such:
- to correct a common misconception, our blood's viscosity (thickness) does not change it is always the same,
we keep hearing thinner blood, blood thinners and ... IT DOES NOT CHANGE.
Blood thinners(anticoagulants: be it warfarin, coumadin, Lovenox, Dabigatran...) do not thinn your blood, what it does is prevent your blood from coagulating if you cut yourself, meaning that if you cut yourself it will take longer to control(stop) the bleeding.
A "normal person" has an INR of around 1.0 (more coagulation)
A "DVT/PE outpatient" (you or I) need to maintain an INR of between 2.0 to 3.0, I have notice that most doctor preffer to see PE outpatients between 2.5 and 3.0.
The higher the #, the less coagulation there is.
At first, you will notice that your INR will fluxtuate and your doctor will be changing your dosage of Warfarin to match your targeted INR. Eventually, if you are one of the lucky ones your targeted area will be attained and you won't feel like a yoyo with your warfarin dosage. (I was not one of the lucky ones...)
I hope this helps to clear the mysteries, if you have more questions, don't be shy. Ask, it's the only way to learn and we NEED to learn.
For the PE specific questions I may have problems, I only had a DVT, never made it to the PE stage.
If somebody that had a PE,may be able to help you more then I can.
You have to understand that all members here are NOT doctors, we are simply going by what we have learned from our experience with DVT.