Martin1962
Member
Greetings, I had my mitral valve replaced with a mechanical one almost 7 weeks ago so am still quite new to being on warfarin and INR testing. This forum has been a great help. I know that many of you will strongly recommend home testing and I have a feeling it is something I will need to do eventually even though I'm a bit of a wimp with needles and don't like the idea of pricking my own finger! However I will be on warfarin for the rest of my life and there would seem to be definite advantages for my health to have the ability to test regularly to ensure I remain in range (2.5-3.5 for me) as much as possible. I was a bit concerned that my local anti-coag clinic were very keen to get me on 2 weekly and then monthly testing when I've only been out of hospital a few weeks and I doubt my INR will have fully stabilised yet. Having said that my latest reading was bang on at 3.1. It was 3.5 a couple of weeks before that but 4.8 a month ago. My clinic is only a 10 minute walk so is very convenient. I have tentatively raised with them about home testing and it seems they will support it so I could get the testing strips and lancets on prescription. I don't know what their policy is on self dosing. I would have to purchase the meter myself and they are quite expensive, but getting one direct from Roche is £299 and you can pay in monthly instalments which seems like a good deal to me. For anyone else in the UK looking for a meter I attach the leaflet received from Roche. So I'm sorry for the rather lengthy post, but I'm still weighing up whether to go for home testing and would appreciate other people's experiences, particularly in the UK.
