The first of my hospital patient records turned up today...

Best wishes.

I suspect that you will deal with things better, when you come to terms with it all. You come across as much healthier, now.  Keep well.

Manly chin up, etc.,

Alonangel 🎇

Thank you for sharing.

And I am pleased that although you've suffered a lot through drinking, that is in the past for you now.  It shows that there is hope there for everyone and everyone, no matter how things may appear to be. 

Wishing you all the best

H

I love getting my hands on the medical records and seeing what they THINK and say. 

However, there is something with me...that it all gets minimized if I want a drink.

​What p*sses me off about all of this that you are finding out NOW...is that WHY don't they tell you when you are potentially in LIVER FAILURE?  Maybe that would scare "pt" to STOP drinking.

​It really bothers me how they seem to look at alcoholics in the uk...just as "meat" passing thru and not human beings that they really want to help!

In your last paragraph you say it happened when you were 48 but that you'd never had issues re drink before? What was your drinking like around that point for you to get so so poorly?

X

I know what you're asking and what your thought process is, because I ask myself the same question, I almost feel like a third party telling a story about someone else.

I didn't drink at all until I was 18 and then only as a social drinker until the age of 25. I could have a bottle of spirits in the house for months and not touch it.

Then I started drinking more heavily, as I started to get more of a buzz. I still preferred social pub drinking, but now I was happy to drink at home and get inebriated. So from the age of 25 to 48, I drank every day, except for 3 days when I was bed bound with bad flu.

From my early 30s, I got a good promotion, but a job that got more and more stressful as the years went on. I started to drink more as a coping mechanism for stress.

I never got hangovers, never felt fuzzy headed, never had trouble doing a day's work. But when work finished, I made up for it. Towards the end, I'd say I was drinking 6 - 8 pints every day without fail. But I never had any of the problems that I hear on the forum, no real warning signs. Years ago, I had had LFT tests and been told to calm the drinking down, but that is about as far as it got.

It really was a bolt out of the blue. I was convinced I was going to hospital for something else, because I had just about lost the use of my legs and my wife had to help me into the GP's surgery. But he took one look at me and said, you're going to hospital. Then turning to my wife he said, he'll need an overnight bag because he won't be home, but take him to the hospital first.

He picked up the phone and said he was calling the bed manager, what he didn't tell me was he was letting them know they were getting an emergency patient, but not via ambulance. Of course all of this was unkown to me and it being Friday afternoon and me having beers at home in the fridge, I said to him, can you make the appointment for tomorrow and I'll go in then. To which he said, no Mr.RH, that's not how it works, go straight to the hospital.

Today, to look at, I look the picture of health, I am fit, walk miles every day and don't seem to suffer any ill affects. It is hard to believe all these things happened to me. It will be two years this Friday. The only reminder is the eight medications I take every day.

I hope that answered your question and I'll leave you with one anecdote.

When I was in Coventry, after I was off the danger list, about 3 or 4 weeks in, when I knew that I had left the critical list and was on the recuperation list, I spoke to one of the consultants. I can still remember the exact words. He had been good to me, and helped me with some issues I'd had. So, when he came to see me one day, I said to him, thank you for looking after me. To which he said, no, thank you. I said, I havn't done anything?. And these were his words, said with a slight Nigerian accent (not too fond of foreign doctors myself, but he'd lived over here for yonks and was very good), Mr.RH, I am not a betting man, but if I were and someone had offered me goods odds on your survival, I would not have taken their money.