Hi
There is an old adage here that being on warfarin can save your life ... well I just thought I'd relate a survival tale from one of the members here who just got back in touch with me last night.
His name is
JulienDu and for those who don't know him hes a trapper / fur gatherer in northen BC. He's a mech valver and on warfarin.
This winter he had an accident with his skidoo and ended up flooding his gumboot (
with its felt liner and wool sox) with water to pull the thing out (
of where it broke though thin ice over "water over flow" on top of really thick ice). The thermometer temp was -30C (yes folks that's like -22F). He had to pull it out of where it was stuck, in order to make it back a few hours to base. On the way back one of the skis on his skidoo broke a ski (I suspect due to iced up suspension) and he had to snow shoe to an abandoned cabin and attempt to light a fire and await rescue.
Mean time his foot (
in a damp gumboot with a damp felt liner) froze solid. He reported that he had lost all feeling below the knee and his leg was hard ... like a piece of meat from the freezer.
Rescue came (when he was identified as late) and they took him back to camp where they thawed his foot out slowly in melt water (like 0.5C) and massaged it bringing the temp up very slowly for 2 hours The next day they took him to hospital. It now seems to have been able to keep the leg and is now walking on it.
No one at the hospital has seen anything like this before (
where amputation would be perhaps expected).
He is walking (with a limp as yet) but doing well. We were discussing this and a number of factors seem to have saved his foot, opinion is that being on warfarin contributed to preventing blood clotting in the extremities in capillaries and contributed to saving his limb.
So as many here say, being on warfarin can help you to reach old age.
Perhaps he'll post here when he gets around to it, but has shitty internet out where he is (but does have phone coverage). He also made the point to me that (
having his hands in freezing waters and stuff regularly) that he has found no difference in feeling cold or getting hypothermia from being on warfarin.
So like that lady who climbed Mt Everest here's another story on how being a mech valver doesn't hold you back.
Best Wishes
