Every year almost 800,000 people die from Cirrhosis of the liver. That is almost 13 people for every 100,000. Now I know you may be wondering why I am talking about cirrhosis and giving you all these crazy stats.
3 and a half months ago I was told that my father had Primary Biliary Cirrhosis an autoimmune disease that is deadly in almost all cases. For those of you that know me you understand that over the last five years my relationship with my father has not been all that great, mostly non-existent, and so Getting something like this sprung on me was sort of crazy. So I went home to visit him and was met with a gruesome site. The man was a shadow of his former self.
When I was a child, and even into my teen years, my father was an image of health and wellness. I remember when I was 15 he fell and broke his rib, after a night of drinking, and I had to drive him to the hospital. He was examined by the doctor and when he was told it was broken he just said, "okay" and we went home. I also remember him breaking his leg when I was little. He broke his neck when I was about 9 or 10 and it didn't seem to bother him. Yet the man I saw when I walked into the house was no longer the tough bone breaking bad ass I knew when I was little. His face was gaunt (I actually thought he was a zombie when I walked in the door it was that gaunt) and his arms were frail and bony. His stomach was so bloated he looked like a little pregnant man and his legs were fatty with fluids as well. For the first time in my life I saw my father in sweatpants and I was as you would expect me to be, angry.
So I visited and made plans to come back in a couple of weeks to see him again. In times of crisis such as this you must try and set aside the things that have made life difficult and move forward mending the fences. I was waylaid by a trip to the hospital, not for me but for him. He had to visit the UW Medical Center and when he got there he was forced to stay. Mind you this was in Mid September that he was admitted and he is still there now. I know you were thinking this story had a bad ending. You thought I was going to talk about his final days in the struggle to fight this horrible disease and that I was recently given the bad news that he was no longer with us on this mortal coil. I smartly enough stayed far away from the UW Bookstore yesterday and was therefore not called with any bad news (the last two times I was there I got calls with bad news, while standing in the same exact spot).
So back to my father. He was admitted with an infection and other maladies that needed to be fixed so he could receive his new liver. We had some scares when he was given some medicine no one knew he was allergic to. He started walking, he stopped walking, he shit a lot. Like I was there for 7 hours on Tuesday and he wen to the bathroom like 8 times. He was drained of fluid just to get it back again and when I was there on Tuesday he had sprung a leak and had to be attached to a bag to catch the fluids. He was put on dialysis and went through it every day (normally with kidney patients, which my father is not, they only do it every other day) for the last few weeks. Just this last month he was elevated to number one on the list and they started looking for a liver. First they had one, it didn't work. Then they had another one, but it was too fatty. Then they had one but for some reason they couldn't give it to him. Then last night he was sent into surgery and received his new liver. He is resting now and will be in the hospital for a while longer but he should start not just getting better but he should start looking better within the next few days.
I want to thank the person that donated their liver to a greater cause. I am an organ donor and hope they get as much use out of my parts as they can when I die. In fact when they didn't ask me when I first got my license if I wanted to be one I was very upset. I think it is very important to help those in need and this is something I can give selflessly as I won't need those bits and pieces when I die. I wish someone didn't have to die for my father to live (I still have lots of mixed feelings in the father department) and my heart goes out to those who lost a loved one.
So although my father drank, a lot, he was not cursed with plain old cirrhosis he got an autoimmune version of it. This may make you feel better about drinking a lot that you may not get caught in the web of cirrhosis but it happens to a lot of people every day. Those numbers I quoted above are just the deaths every year not the diagnosed cases. Please drink responsibly and lightly. I don't forgive people for being stupid and I hope to god I never have to go through this again. So, friends and family reading this, please think about the choices you make in your life and how they may effect you in the years to come.
Saturday
PS He promised he would get better and he has kept it so far.
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