1. Community
  2. Liver and gallbladder
  3. Liver Problems

There is Hope - End Stage

Posted , 66 users are following.

joel66
joel66

Since joining the site I have read some really sad posts, mostly from people believing they are knocking on deaths doorstep from end stage liver disease relating to alcoholism. You need to know that the body is a VERY resiliant multicellular organism. It's entire Job is to keep you living as long as possible to ensure the survival of the human race. With that said, if you astain from alcohol and follow the proper dietary requirements, the progression of Cirrhosis can be slowed to a snails pace and even halted in some cases. It is never to late, but you must STOP drinking as the body can't begin its healing process and deal with your abuse at the same time. I wish everyone well, and I pray daily for anyone and everyone who is effected by this horrible disease.

Love you all.

​

10 likes, 99 replies

99 Replies

Prev Next
  • james_59984
    james_59984 joel66

    Edited

    Hello Joel66' I'm wondering if you had a scans or blood work abnormalities and symptoms that led to your diagnosis, I'm sure maybe one or all apply, just wanted to know if you can share your experience, as I have had normal everything but lots of new symptoms in addition to declining health over the last five years" in my research , all apply to cirrhosis . I drank from 14 years of age to 32. Thank u for your time

    • joel66
      joel66 james_59984

      Posted

      In my opinion you will know when you have cirrhosis. People just try to ignore it as long as possible until its apparently OBVIOUS the damage has been done. Most people ignore it so they can continue to keep drinking their faces off. What symptoms do you have? Are you still drinking alcohol?
    • joel66
      joel66 james_59984

      Posted

      Also, sorry I didn't answer your question. Labs will be totally messed up with Cirrhosis. IF a scan shows scarring but the labs are not out of wack (like some people state) that would mean the disease is no progressing, which is a good thing. So, Labs and Ultrasound. Huge showing is your platelette count on your blood test, if its really low its would suggest portal hypertension and the disease has progressed.
    • RHGB
      RHGB joel66

      Posted

      Interesting, I have PH and varices. My platelet count was down to about 75, but has recovered to 115 so far.
    • joel66
      joel66 RHGB

      Posted

      Ya thats low. Average platelette count on a healthy indivudal is 275,000
    • RHGB
      RHGB joel66

      Posted

      There must be a different measurement in America then, because over here the avg. is 140 - 400.
    • joel66
      joel66 RHGB

      Posted

      Here average is 150 - 400, so 150 and less is on the low side.
    • RHGB
      RHGB joel66

      Posted

      You just said avg. 275,000, that's a bit of a change in numbers.
    • joel66
      joel66 RHGB

      Posted

      Let me rephrase. 275,000 is a perfect platelette count, anything lower or higher is above or below the average, but still considered "normal" 
    • james_59984
      james_59984 RHGB

      Posted

      Hello friend" what stage are you?if you don't mind me asking? I like to dig back 10 years or so in labs,when I was heathy and robunkchious my platelets wheir 325-380 I now juggle around with 155-200 and all the way to 240 when I eat strawberries
    • james_59984
      james_59984

      Posted

      I guess the averages can vary ,female are said to have a higher platelet count than male with average male at 245 and female at 270 between ages of 35-49, so it veries by age, gender and raice , however there are many charted values out there to compare and really knowing wich is the right one is easy
    • james_59984
      james_59984

      Posted

      I'm sorry😁I meant "is not easy"
    • RHGB
      RHGB james_59984

      Posted

      115, are your readings all from hospital tests, and if so, do you eat strawberries just before you have bloods done? I'm Child-Pugh Class A.
    • james_59984
      james_59984 RHGB

      Posted

      I add strawberries to my diet a couple weeks before my test , they have a decent amount of vit k" there are better things out here like papaya fruit, specially the leaves, cucumber peals, spinach, beets"and so on, papayas are great! Anythink vit k helps increase platelets
    • james_59984
      james_59984

      Posted

      Are you hep C patient? How long did it take for you to notice the drop in platelets?
    • james_59984
      james_59984 joel66

      Posted

      Hello Joel " I suspected. Cirrhosis in September 2009" was 32 and binge drinking since14. Started feeling disoriented driving down my own street where I lived for 10 years and didn't know where I was!whent to county fair a month latersame thing happened , I remember trolley operator asking everyone to exit the truck and I was the last one on!didnt understand what to do?i just remember everybody laughing at me when he spoke through the mic and asked me what I was still doing on the bus! Lil did they know I was in need of medical attention,then came my symptoms of irritable bowel a month after and that's when I told myself" your liver is sick!"so I wanted to stop but I had been waiting for paqiuao vs Marquez fight for a while and wanted to enjoy it with my friends , family, and of coarse BEER,so I gave myself till I think it was dec11 2009 fight,and I enjoyed myself with family and friends that night and after that I quit !just like I told myself! And it has been really hard on me bcuz i❤️ Beer , still do ! But I don't really drink no more because I love my kids and I'm not in a hurry to put them through the nightmare that is coming,!sorry for going so long" anyway's on top of those 2 symptoms then came frequent urination,dark urine, itchyness , spyder angiomas,kidney pain head aches, weakness , low testosterone ,enlarged spleen with pain, and so on,but all scans and bloodwork normal for years, 4 ultrasounds all unremarkable "3ct scans=unremarkable"1mri unremarkable" one scan done showing inflammatory bowel disease.
    • james_59984
      james_59984

      Posted

      Pulmonary hypertension"Going liver specialist September , ultrasound in July ,finally getting a biopsy, u can have normal scans and bloodwork with cirrhosis ! But there are so many things tha mimic the disease that doctors can't say cirrhosis so they look elsewhere until you have so many issues that it makes physical exam easily diagnosable" by then it's pretty obviouse !
    • RHGB
      RHGB james_59984

      Edited

      No ALD, I found out about the platelets wwhen I spent two months in hospital, because I became jaundiced and ill, I didn't notice the jaundice but when I saw my GP, he sent me straight to hospital for possible liver failure, but I had one more trick up my sleeve.

      I decided that very same time (must have been related) to have an acute cerebral haemorrhage with midline shift, so I had to sets of consultants looking after me, one for my liver and one for my brain. Spent about two months in hospital.

    • james_59984
      james_59984 RHGB

      Posted

      Wow... You are verry lucky! Glad you made it through👍what wheir your first symptoms befor you found out and did you have normal blood work and scans as well?
    • RHGB
      RHGB james_59984

      Posted

      No prior symptoms and for that reason I never went to the GP, so I never had any scans or bloods.
    • joel66
      joel66 james_59984

      Posted

      The symptoms your talking about could also be Kidney related. The confusion aspect you're talking about I have never had, not like that at least. More of a general brain fog, rather than amnesia type symptoms you are having. If your labs and scans are perfect. I'd have a hard time saying you have cirrhosis. When you say Dark urine, do you mean tea colored? Or amber? Can you show me a pic of your spyder angiomas and your palms please. 
    • joel66
      joel66 james_59984

      Posted

      Also, not sure if you knew this. But binge drinkers have a much less chance at ever getting cirrhosis, rather than daily drinking functioning alcoholics. This is a Fact.
    • james_59984
      james_59984 joel66

      Posted

      That's interesting stuff about drinking!how excactly does that work? Everybody who has cirrhosis has different type of symptoms at different type of stage, some people stage 1 showing symptoms, some stage 3 no symptoms!,depending on your own individual body, the last time I drank ,I couldn't bend down the next day because I would get sharp pain on left upper quadrant " spleen"so I told and told my doctor until he finaly checked but first he thought I was crazy,anyway he finaly put his hand on my stomache and began feel around that's when he pushed down hard and I said ouch!he looked at me with worry in his eyes and said,shouldn't be able to palpate a normal spleen! Long story short" ultrasound revealed 13.5cm spleen ,liver 17.8cm compared to two month prior unremarkable 11.6cm spleen,16.5cm liver, some people have big nodules on their livers ,some have super micro nodgular livers! Those are the hardest ones to detect on any scan .just depends on how your liver how your liver handles what you put in it and how often,my doctor tells me it's just a waiting game and it will show, my palms are not read and they don't look like hamburger meat, my urine is the collor of Apple juice ,not from bilirubin but from all of the junk my liver is not processing forcing my kidneys to work overtime!are. We alowed to share pics in this forum ?if so I can create some space in my phones memory to share some. Another thing is I remember every time I would go to doctor since 1998 they would tell me that my liver enzymes would b slightly elevated, every single time,all these years, they would tell me that it's nothing to worry about, just don't drink for a month and we will recheck them, but I never stoped, I would drink as soon as I got out, worse yet I developed a habit of popping Xanax and norcos with my beers for the final five years of my drinking.
    • joel66
      joel66 james_59984

      Posted

      Is your urine that color all the time? Apple juice colored Urine in the morning is quite normal, or while dehydrated. Liver Cirrhosis Urine with complications is more like the color of tea.. its quite noticeable. 

      Different patterns of drinking can produce a different set or pattern of gene expression by the liver because of adaptation by the liver which occurs when the same level of blood alcohol is repeated over and over again," explained Samuel W. French, Distinguished Professor of pathology at the UCLA School of Medicine, and chief of anatomic pathology at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Basically, the liver "learns" or "remembers" its response to alcohol.

      "Unfortunately, these adaptive changes in gene expression are injurious to the liver and are furthermore persistent in the liver even when alcohol drinking has stopped," French added. "This is why people who develop liver disease after chronic alcohol abuse continue to be sick from liver damage for many months after they have stopped drinking. In fact, they actually get worse when they stop drinking because their liver is programmed epigenetically to work under the influence of alcohol because of daily drinking. Think of it as deleterious conditioning and a learning process for the liver."

      Have you ever been diagnosed with Anxiety or Panic Disorder? Do you think maybe you over react to some of your symptoms and thnink the worse?

      The picture button is located right here in the comment box on the top to the right of the smiley face. 

       

    • james_59984
      james_59984 joel66

      Posted

      Wow that's pretty interesting stuff about liver having memory after quiting, I think we all have done a lot of research here, but I think we all look at what fits our own sanerio as we try to help ourselves and repair the damages that have been taking a toll on our lives and families, looking for answers and hope, waiting for the cure. I know I have ,and my doctor has been telling me for a while that he believes I have cirrhosis but yet has declined to send me to liver specialist because he's not allowed to in his practice, only until there are plenty signs of the disease with normal labs and scans can or will they send you , so now I'm qualified for the specialist and the biopsy to see how far I am. I developed the apple juice colored urine the last day after I got drunk wich is when my spleen enlarged and my urine output increased from going 4-5 x a day to going 10-14 x a day, including 2 -6x a night depending on what I ate, it is always Apple juice color no matter what time of day. Sometimes it is clear but maybe 20 percent of the time! But my doctors keep rerasure ing me that it's not my kidneys , only had one doctor tell me it was liver related when he look at the whole chart. I think we all go through a little anxiety when we have dramatic changes in our body's but that helps us move forward and fight,I was anxiouse for the first month till I saw the doc, then after that I had already stopped drinking so I figured I'd go the extra mile and change my diet and have been taking all sorts of natural remedies plus exercising , I was feeling great at first but about 4 years in just started wearing down, too tired all of the time now,
    • james_59984
      james_59984

      Posted

      I don't see a camera thing here anywhere , r u on a computer /tablet? I have an I phone, maybe need tablet or something to c the whole page correctly, maybe you can describe what you are looking for and I can tell you what I see, or can send a pic to your phone.
    • joel66
      joel66 james_59984

      Posted

      That is SO strange about the urine. Again, high urine output is another symptom you're having that is not liver related, kidney related. Frequent urination. You should really have your kidneys looked at. If you look at my reply before this one, I added a picture to it, look very closely. The picture shows you the buttons im talking about to share a picture.
    • james_59984
      james_59984 joel66

      Posted

      U can also get cirrhosis of the liver the verry first time binge drink
    • james_59984
      james_59984 joel66

      Posted

      The urine increase happens to lots of people with cirrhosis, everyone will have different severities in symptoms, once the liver is damaged and can not filter like it once did extra toxins our body are picked by the kidneys causing the kidney to excrete more urine and making you more volnurable to dehydration, when you are late stage then urine is darker,and less frequent
    • james_59984
      james_59984

      Posted

      I scrolled all the way down, but couldn't find anything except for empty boxes to fill info and find patient, I will go on from a table tomorrow , it will work better for me
    • james_59984
      james_59984 joel66

      Posted

      I sorry that you are feeling that way, maybe your doctors are giving are giving you the wrong information or maybe mine are. Who knows, I know you don't, and I know I don't , none of us here seem to be doctors or scientists , that's y we all follow the advise of our own doctors.other than that we have dr google wich offers hundreds of thausands of repetitive studies from multiple doctors, universities and scientists, from US and all over the world , all contradicting each other . So even if I by some miracle or u by some miracle where to be scientists or docs or any of the above and shared our opinions, how would anyone know who is right?that's y like I said" we all get our minds poisoned by different doctors who follow different studies or by all the hours of research that we ourselves invest with dr google my friend . But other than that I'm glad you shared your opinion😉

    • joel66
      joel66 james_59984

      Posted

      For someone to think that you can get cirrhosis after drinking one time, that person would not know anything about cirrhosis or how it comes about.... 
Back to top
Prev Next

Report or request deletion

Thanks for your help!

We want the community to be a useful resource for our users but it is important to remember that the community are not moderated or reviewed by doctors and so you should not rely on opinions or advice given by other users in respect of any healthcare matters. Always speak to your doctor before acting and in cases of emergency seek appropriate medical assistance immediately. Use of the community is subject to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and steps will be taken to remove posts identified as being in breach of those terms.