The year is coming (rapidly) to a close and you know what that means – my birthday! Ahem, December 16. No really, it means that we are all about to embark upon the annual tradition of reflection and self-examination. What have you accomplished this year? What have you learned? How are you different than you were one year ago?
These are really big questions for me this time around. Jason and I are successfully making our home in Los Angeles. We’ve even got some furniture now! I have a great new job at the best company ever, doing something I never thought I’d be doing. I’m learning every day and I feel like I’m really making a difference. I’ve also made some progress on a few personal projects that I have pretty high hopes for. (Stay tuned for updates.)
This year has also been a very sorrowful one for me. My step-father was diagnosed with cancer and within seven months, died from it. I learned a lot of things I thought I’d never need to know. As I mentioned before, a lot of good has come from this most difficult experience. Most notably, my renewed closeness with my sister Valerie.
And she hasn’t hesitated to use that to her advantage. In a move that harkens back to old times, my sister recently asked me to help her write a paper for school. Valerie works as an EMT in Bucks County, PA and she’s currently going through nursing school. Historically, the least academic of the Krimmel daughters, Valerie is rocking nursing school and I’m really proud of her. The topic of the paper? The liver. Strangely appropriate, this assignment allowed me to learn even more unfortunately relevant medical information:
Some signs and symptoms of liver disease are jaundice, dark urine, altered mental status, weakness, nausea, vomiting of blood, bloody stools, abdominal ascites, and abdominal pain.
A patient in acute liver failure is one of the sickest persons for whom a physician will ever have to provide care. The liver does many things, including making blood clotting factors, storing sugar as energy reserves, digesting food, and removing waste products from the blood. When a person�s liver is severely damaged from hepatitis B virus, all of these functions are lost. A person in acute liver failure bleeds into their skin and internal organs and from intravenous sites. Because of the build up of nitrogen wastes in the blood, the person becomes stuporous and eventually goes into coma.
Alcoholic fatty liver is the accumulation of fat in the liver cells. This is the mildest and earliest form of liver injury from alcohol. This occurs in most people that drink 60g of alcohol a day for just a short period of time. This mild form of liver injury may be completely reversed if the individual stops alcohol consumption completely for two to four weeks.
Alcoholic hepatitis is an inflammatory condition. This causes the ballooning of liver cells, and is responsible for fibroids found in the portal veins causing portal hypertension, and necrosis. Patients may complain of weakness, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. Complications of alcoholic hepatitis are identical to alcoholic cirrhosis such as esophageal varices, and ascities. Alcoholic hepatitis is reversible with prolonged abstinence.
Alcoholic cirrhosis is the end stage of Alcoholic Liver Disease. Again, this is the depositing of scar tissue in the liver. Some things that can be found with cirrhosis are impaired liver function, liver cancer, and portal hypertension. Cirrhosis may occur rapidly secondary to alcoholic hepatitis.
Alcoholic Fatty liver. Blech.
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My dad has liver cirrhosis from Hepitatis. It has devastated all of us. I understand.