Since my recent heart attack, my diet has been severely restricted by the combination of the low fat/low salt changes you would expect, but also by the myriad food interactions that can occur with my laundry list of medications.  Added to the mix is that I am vegetarian – well, pescatarian… I do occasionally eat fish… and suddenly, finding stuff to eat has been a serious challenge.

One of the main concerns when taking Coumadin, a favorite anti-coagulant “blood thinner” for post heart surgery folks, is Vitamin K.  Vitamin K is a Coumadin “antagonist,” which means it can literally negate the effects of the blood thinner by beefing up your body’s ability to form blood clots.  Vitamin K’s superpower is very handy when you’re a typically healthy person; blood clotting keeps you from bleeding to death when you get a cut.  When you’re trying to keep clots from forming and getting jammed up in your arteries or stuck on your brand new stents or traveling to your brain and giving you a stroke… well, the power’s not as super.

Guess what foods have the highest concentration of Vitamin K?  You guessed it: vegetables!  Especially green leafy vegetables like spinach and kale or, as I like to call them, the basis of my entire diet. Thanks to my amazingly patient and resourceful husband, I have been able to have tasty meals that fall within all the many rules that my doctors have placed on me.  But it’s not been because there are so many Post Heart Attack Coumadin-Dependent Vegetarian cookbooks out there.  It’s been because The Buddhist (who has always done all the cooking in our family’s division of labor) has been creative in the kitchen and willing to incorporate the changes into all our diets, partially in solidarity and partially because he doesn’t want to have to cook 2 separate things every meal – one for me and one for him and the kids.

And gods bless him for doing it.  With the combination of my diminished capacity for activity and my general lack of interest in cooking, I swear if not for him, I would be surviving exclusively on fat free yogurt and instant oatmeal – the two things I know are low in both fat and salt and have no vitamin K. Quite good fortune to have the Sweetest. Husband. Ever.