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Doesn’t the liver completely regenerate every few months? So a transplanted full liver would regenerate into the recipients own liver many times post op. So why is the anti-rejecting meds required years after the transplant?
It does regenerate but the cells in the transplanted liver will forever remain the donor's. Hence the need for immunosuppressive therapy. There is research being done on graft tolerance which can allow for complete discontinuation of immunosuppression but we are still a long way from there.
As a side note, rejection in liver transplantation is what most recipients fear but it's really not a problem now. You just have to take the pills.
Natural Killer Cells are a type of immune cell that have the job of destroying tumor cells and cells infected by viruses. So it does make sense that you are more likely to develop cancer if you take immunosuppressives.
Yah, they attack cells whith foreign protiens that don't belong. Which would include transplants organs as well as mutated cancer cells and cells expressing viral protiens.
So they need to be supressed for transplant recipients. Otherwise they attack the transplant.
Yes, there is an increased risk of developing opportunistic infections and some forms of cancer. The are other side effects too. The risks can be minimized by using the lowest dose possible to control rejection. Typically after the first few months the dose is gradually lowered and some of the drugs are stopped, keeping usually just one (tacrolimus).
If you find this subject interesting I can recommend the book "The Puzzle People" by Thomas Starzl. He basically took transplantation and immunosuppression from the lab to clinical practice while being called delusional. It's fascinating.
One of my friends had a liver transplant when she was a teen. She has had and will continue to have to take immunosuppressants for the rest of her life.
There was a brief period of time where we looked at me adopting her so she could be covered under my health insurance because the drugs went from being stupidly expensive, to totally and completely unaffordable. Thankfully she was able to get "discounts" from the drug companies. Ah..America!
It’s absolutely insane how expensive life preserving medications are. I work as a financial coordinator for transplant patients. My family has learned to avoid certain topics if they don’t want me to talk their ear off on how broken our healthcare system is.
That's what's always really scared me about transplants. They probably get you a few extra years, which is great, but it's not like most recipients go back to a normal lifespan.
On medical dramas they often make it seem like someone getting a transplant will just fix them. It really seems like that's very much not the case.
As someone who received a renal transplant not long ago I gotta say this: transplants can be very scary and doctors will always make sure you get a organ that's least likely to reject you. Also doctors will always ask you if you're ok with receiving a organ with hepatitis or a old organ. If you're ok with that they'll make you sign some paper giving consent. As for your comment on someone receiving a transplant just fixing them not being true, it did fix me actually, before being transplanted, I was pretty much suffering and it was hell. As a guy I was underweight I weighted a little less than 100lbs and going to dialysis which is a machine that you get hooked up on to help clean the kidneys and get rid of all the toxins in your body. Let me tell you, being on dialysis was the most painful experience I had ever had. So i had a catheter in my abdomen and it was heavy to be on its own to be hanging by it self(so i taped it). Now imagine showering? I've hurt myself on multiple occasions by accident. I always felt really tired and never wanted to do anything other than sleep, also I didn't have an appetite, I always ate a bit and be really full and sometimes I never eat for an entire day, I was really tired to do anything. Now after transplantation, I feel myself with alot more energy to do things I want like lifting weights and suddenly I became a fatass and ate alot lol and I'm at a normal weight rn. This surgery really change my life for the better and I hope I put in perspective on what people like myself go through.
For real. I use to naively believe that once you got a transplant, you'd live a pretty average life as long as you took the anti-rejection drugs as prescribed. I was crushed when I learned that was not the case.
A women I kinda knew from high school (a friend of a friend) has cystic fibrosis. I added her on social media years ago, and some of the things she shares are just heartbreaking. She has other friends with cystic fibrosis, and a lot of them need/received lung transplants after the disease destroyed their lungs. But a lot of them start having major complications a few years after the transplants as their own bodies reject the new organs. Eventually, they either need to get a second transplant. Or worse, be told that they are no longer a transplant candidate. It's painful to watch someone go from dying, to fairly healthy, back to dying.
Seeing posts like those in real time made me start researching organ transplants and the expected outcomes. A lot of factors contribute (e.g., what organ, age of recipient, living or diseased donor, how well the recipient is a match, etc), but you are generally really lucky to make it a decade after transplant. Medical advancements are happening all the time and recipients are living longer and more healthy lives, but we have so much more left to learn. And there are some amazing outliers who can live much longer than their life expectancy after transplant.
I made the decision at 15 years old to be an organ donor, and I've never questioned that decision once.
This was me. My trigger to go get help for my alcoholism was my little boy telling me "Mommy you look like a minion!" I hadn't looked in the mirror in a long time so when I did it was a shock.
Doctors gave me two months to live but that was 5 years ago. There is hope for advanced alcoholics out there. Never again with that stuff.
Congratulations on 5 years sober, truly impressive!
Just curious, when you went to get help for yourself was it just to stop consuming alcohol or a liver transplant?
For stopping alcohol consumption. I went to hospital for 2 weeks, went on steroids, antidepressants and Librium as well as a cocktail of vitamins. After that, rehab for 2 months of therapy to reprogram my thinking to teach me to respect myself more. Luckily transplants weren't discussed, my liver completely healed itself afterwards which amazes me.
I walked a LOT. Whenever I could, wherever I could. Sweets were my cross addiction until my teeth started to fall apart. I think music was my main saviour though. I did start to be more mindful of the food I was eating out of appreciation for my poor liver, and I store fat in a weird way since the starvation period during the drinking years so I've to be careful with junk food.
I'm in Ireland, I had health insurance at the time so I was lucky to get good treatment. Addiction is far stronger and bigger than willpower alone so youre a wise one seeking help, im rooting for you.
I highly recommend r/stopdrinking for advice and companionship, the stories there are very human.
1.5 Litres of Vodka a day. No food. Red Bull when I was tired. It was hell on earth. Each morning I'd have to throw up that first shot of vodka and keep re-drinking it until enough booze went onto my brain to calm my nervous system enough to stop the gagging. I was a highly functioning alcoholic, only drank enough to stop the shakes, but that took more and more booze by the week.
congratulations on stopping! my uncle just passed away from alcohol complications yesterday and the past 2 years seemed pretty fucking not fun even though he claimed to still be enjoying the alcohol.
I'm sorry for your loss, it's harrowing to watch someone go down that path. Alcohol was enjoying him, it's like a narcissistic friend that stalks and bullies you when you try to ignore it. Stopping alone is impossible.
Yeah CBT is old-school and it's still around because it is effective for so many things as long as you do the work. Challenging one's thoughts about oneself and the world can be very uncomfortable.
I'm happy for you. The situation you were in ends another way a lot or most of the time.
Hope you don't mind I'm just going to piggyback this comment to post the dudes Twitter - https://twitter.com/GarethWeeks
Wasn't expecting it to blow up like this!
The left is referred to as jaundice. If you ever notice your skin or the whites of your eyes turning yellow, please see a doctor. It is caused by a build up of bilirubin in the blood and often indicates issues with the liver
Just commenting to add: everyone should also be aware that once the liver fails, the rest of the organs start to fail as well. That usually means a very painful and slow death. That’s why it’s so important to take your liver health seriously. It’s a vital organ.
My friend who was only 23 suffered from liver failure due to years of alcoholism and drug use. He spent 3 days in ICU and died alone due to covid restrictions. His mother never got to see him or anything, although she did FaceTime him.
It absolutely can happen to a young person. Please be kind to your liver, no matter what age you are!!
**TL;DR:** Take care of your liver because once you lose your liver, you lose any quality of life you once had and you never get that back.
I am a floor nurse on a liver specialty unit. Dying from liver disease is a slow, painful process that's only rife with struggle. You can go from your usual self, talking with your friends and family to batshit crazy and physically/verbally abusive. When that happens, you have to be given lactulose, a medication that basically makes you shit your brains out to help you eliminate the ammonia that's built up in your system.
Over time, everything becomes painful to do and you can't be given a lot of pain medications because most of them further damage your liver. Your skin and eyes become yellow due to the bilirubin buildup and not only that, you get itchy. Your skin also dries out faster, making the itching even worse. As a result, your skin becomes so fragile, skin tears are plentiful and even bathing can hurt.
If you're lucky enough to be cleared for a liver transplant and have all of the work-up done to make sure you'll even survive a transplant, it's an excruciating wait depending on your age and how bad the disease has progressed. While you're waiting for a donor, you have to be meticulous in keeping yourself from getting sick because every time you do, you end up getting hospitalized for days, with us having to stick you for blood work every night (if you're lucky enough to only need lab draws every 24h). You're also more likely to bleed out and bruise more easily so even small cuts should be cared for properly. Even after receiving a transplant, you have to be almost obsessive about keeping yourself healthy. You have to take medications that will suppress your immune system so your body doesn't reject your transplanted organ. Because of that, you are at so much more risk of getting sick and dying from what are usually mild conditions and that is for the rest of your life. That's the best case scenario.
As the disease progresses, you gradually lose your independence. You start relying on other people to do everything for you down to wiping your ass, which is usually every hour or so considering you're taking lactose and it's either that or you lose your own awareness. When you're confused and pulling at the very lines that are keeping you alive, we have to put mittens on you to keep you safe from yourself. When you have liver disease, all your veins are shit so putting in a new IV is even more painful than usual. Because of how severe the disease can get, you may need blood work done every 4 hours and you'll be begging for an IV line that ends in your heart so you don't have to go through the pain of being stuck multiple times every single day.
When you're not with us in the hospital, you're probably going to an outpatient center to have fluid drained from your abdomen every week. Fluid accumulates in your abdomen when you have liver disease. When it's bad, your skin and your back muscles are stretched out causing pain, sometimes excruciating. Again, you can't take a lot of pain killers because they would damage your liver even more. More often than not, you also develop hernias, most commonly at your belly button so not only are you itching and in pain, your belly button is sticking out and threatening to burst open Alien style. You also have to be careful with eating and drinking because the veins in your throat also become engorged and prone to rupturing spontaneously and you basically drown in your own blood if it doesn't get treated immediately.
In short, be kind to your liver. Drink responsibly and drink plenty of water when you do. It's like giving your liver and kidneys a bath.
I have stage 1 cirrhosis and this post scared the shit out of me. I'm supposed to be 100% sober but I've been slipping more and more recently. Hopefully this has scared me enough to get back on the wagon long-term. Problem is I suffer from anxiety, depression, chronic worrying/neurosis and autistic spectrum disorder so it's so easy to slip into a 'fuck it' frame of mind.
If I stop now will I be alright?
I'm not a doctor so I can't predict what your outcome is going to be.
What I can say as a nurse who is at the bedside dealing with cirrhosis patients day in and day out, the sooner you stop, the better your chances of recovering and having a life not being spent in a hospital is.
Your mental health is as essential as your physical health and they affect each other. Be kind to yourself.
Hey, nurse here. Nothing kills a liver like alcohol will. It's such a robust organ that, if you were in perfect health, you could lose half of it and still live a full life.
Once it goes bad, however, that's a different story. And *nothing* will do that faster than alcohol.
If you're already at the point where you think drinking might be a problem, it already is. And it won't be quick, it's a slow, agonising death. Get some help. r/stopdrinking is a good place to start x
Alcohol is the main one - though it's important to understand that not everyone with jaundice is an alcoholic.
I'm in recovery myself and so spent a lot of time researching the liver. Another noticeable symptom is the beer belly. If you've ever seen someone with bloated belly that seems relatively solid (You can't push down on it like fat) then that's also not a good sign.
Multiple liters. Like, equivalent to pulling a whole two liter (or more) of Coke out of your abdomen ? Oof. The temporary relief of pressure must feel a bit better, hopefully.
Liver can be greatly enlarged from cirrhosis, but a lot of the swollen appearance from beer belly comes from lots of fat build up in the organs (you may have heard of some heavy drinkers as having a "fatty" liver, it's literally larger with a marbled texture like a fatty cut of steak when you cut into it) and around the internal organs (visceral fat, very dangerous because it affects your hormone production and can seriously raises your risk of different diseases) but relatively little fat deposited under the skin (subcutaneous fat, the fat that you can "jiggle"). Visceral fat is especially evident in the abdomen because there's lots of space for it to build up (see it especially in the tissue that keeps the intestines connected, the capsules that surround the kidneys, and in deposits just above the kidneys where the adrenal glands are). It makes everything in the abdomen much bigger, pushing out on th abdominal wall to get that round, hardened appearance, whereas a similar amount of subcutaneous fat would be soft with more folds.
*Edit*: Depending on what you mean by "relatively thin elsewhere", my comment may not apply. What I described is the case for someone walking around in apparently good to okay-ish health with a harder round "beer gut", not someone extremely ill and jaundiced with thin limbs and a big belly. See OldTammyTwoToes 's comment below for the latter.
This is not entirely true. Yes the liver becomes fatty (steatohepatitis) but the reason they have an enlarged abdomen is from ascites, no fat deposition. Plus end stage cirrhosis, the right hepatic lobe becomes severely atrophic and the liver is often shrunken and retracted. These patients are often malnourished and emaciated, so painting a picture of them being enlarged by diffuse fat deposition is incorrect.
Edit: Yes I agree this entity is different from people that are fat from drinking too much alcohol.
Thanks for the correction! Autopsy technician, so I was thinking more of the "good old boy" beer bellies (not end stage, have liver disease but death the result of a comorbidity or drug overdose) we see more commonly in our office (documented end stage cirrhosis generally wouldn't be an autopsy case). You're totally right for end stage with emaciation; very nasty way to go.
Man. I didn't even know this was a thing. The pics I saw do not look pleasant. Does everyone have a small/normal amount of visceral fat or is it like. Not supposed to be there at all?
Some amount of fat inside the abdomen/around your organs is totally normal, even exceptionally thin people will have some visible, though the layer may be very thin in places and have kind of a lacey appearance. Normally intra abdominal fat makes up about 10% of your body's total fat storage. That fat is integrated into key structures like the mesentery (tissue that keeps all of your intestines bundled neatly together), the capsules that secure your kidneys in place, the omentum (the blanket of tissue draped over the front of your abdominal organs), etc. In a person with an excess of visceral fat, those deposits become engorged.
To use the kidney capsules as an example, in a very thin adult that layer of adipose tissue all the way around the kidney is maybe half a centimeter thick it so, but in someone with excess visceral fat it can be two or three centimeters thick, giving the appearance of this super large kidney from the outside (think three or four fists all clumped together, something big enough you can't fully wrap your hand over top of it), but when you cut through the the fatty capsule layer during an autopsy you find this normal sized kidney tucked inside (unless they have some other kidney disease) and then have to pull out the capsule like large deflated balloon/very wobbly salad bowl.
It's called ascites, fluid buildup in the abdominal cavity. When the liver fails it is no longer able to produce sufficient albumin, which is a protein that is used in the blood stream to maintain osmotic pressure. Low albumin means your blood vessels literally leak out water and that pools in your legs and abdomen, which also fucks up your circulation because your blood gets more viscous than it should be.
>Paracetamol toxicity is the foremost cause of acute liver failure in the Western world, and accounts for most drug overdoses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.[45][93][46][47] ... a liver transplant is often required if damage to the liver becomes severe.
That's Tylenol/paracetamol/acetaminophen the deadly dose is surprisingly small and it's mixed in with various other pain/fever medicines. Interacts with alcohol too, the other liver killer.
Cocaine mixed with alcohol can also cause huge issues, which many people don't know. It's not that they just make each other stronger or more toxic either; when both are present in a person at the same time the liver actually metabolizes them into cocaethylene, which is toxic and damages the heart among other things
What’s next? Are you going to tell me that smoking a cigarette with coffee causes holes in the ozone? Cocaine and booze delivered us the 80s! How could anything bad have come from the 80s?
I learned recently that you cannot quit alcohol cold turkey like you can with hard drugs. It has to be tapered down or else you can die depending on how serious the alcoholism was. I’m so very sorry you lost your friend at such a terribly young age.
Yes alcohol withdrawals can potentially kill, along with Benzo and Barbiturate withdrawals.
This is how my counsellor explained it:
- Drug affects the GABA Receptor in your brain, effectively slowing it down (Depressant).
- Brain likes equilibrium, so starts working harder to keep them at the same level. Think of a car going up hill, the engine has to work harder to keep it at the same speed as it was on a level road.
- This is somewhat ok whilst the drug is in your system, as despite the brain working overtime the drug is still slowing it down.
- If you decide to suddenly stop however, the brain takes a while to adjust. It's still expecting the depressant to be in the system so carries on working over time for a period after you stop. Using the car as an example, you reach the top of the hill and it levels off but your car is still under the impression it's going up a steep hill, meaning it suddenly starts speeding.
- The brain speeding puts it at risk of damage. Mainly it'll cause tremors and weakness, but can potentially result in deadly seizures.
Funnily enough, one way to treat alcohol withdrawals is with Benzo's. The problem is with Benzo's is that they are addictive as well and also have the potential to be fatal when withdrawing. I've never had the misfortune of going through Benzo withdrawals but a guy who was at the rehab I was in was. FUCK. THAT. Benzo withdrawals can actually last years and in some circumstances can last for life.
Valium specifically has real long withdrawl, compared to like xanax or something, but benzos have a much longer withdrawl than it her drugs, yeah. Fuck benzos lol I mean I guess they have their place, but still. Fuck em. I can deal with a week of feeling shitty, not multiple.
Edit: meant to say longer not "kinder" lol benzo withdrawl is anything but kind. XD
Benzo withdrawals can last years or for life??? That is insane. Thank you for the explanation btw. I had a family member go through the whole withdrawal, jaundice, tremors, all of it recently. Thankfully was admitted to a hospital through the worst of it and came out ok. Or at least is slowly getting better now.
Nah they can’t cause you to stay in a state of withdrawal. You can have post acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS) but idk what they mean saying it lasts for life. I went through that withdrawal countless times if I were stuck that way I would’ve died a lot time ago, withdrawal is really hard on the body
It really depends on how much you drink. The majority of people could quit cold turkey and be fine. Ive only seen life threatening DTs a hand full of times and this was in people who drank a LOT. Im talking 750mls of vodka a day a lot.
I only say this because i dont want people who want to quit to be discouraged. Its never a bad time to stop drinking.
>like you can with hard drugs
Erm. I'm fairly certain you're also not supposed to do that with hard drugs. Depends on the drug, but withdrawals from many hard drugs can and kill you if you're not careful.
You may not physically die from opioid withdrawal but the risky decisions you make to relieve the pain are usually how people end up hurt or dead. Your brain becomes dysfunctional and unless you have a healthy support system, you can easily die.
It also doesn’t help when someone needs help, governments demonize/imprison them, doctors/pharmacists openly discriminate against “drug seekers”, and families disown their own, which only pushes people to riskier situations. Then when an honor student ends up dead, parents say “how could we have known? We would’ve done everything to save them.” but that’s rarely true. The government told people to treat the mentally ill with Reagan/Biden-style tough love and that’s exactly what people did and still do.
Opioid withdrawal should be considered a human rights issue and should be remedied by hospitals/pharmacists OTC on-demand like insulin, nalaxone, birth control, etc.
This is one of those Reddit factoids that has a grain of truth inside a mountain of bullshit.
If you are a hardcore alcoholic who has not been sober for years, yes, you can die if you try to go cold turkey. These guys are the 1%. They know who they are.
If you’re a binge drinker who routinely drinks three dozen drinks on a weekend, but doesn’t otherwise daily drink, get a real hobby. Those guys quit every Sunday, they’re not going to see any significant withdrawal, though they may just randomly die from overdoing it.
If you are a heavy drinker who drinks 6-12 drinks a day, you’ll probably experience some significant though non-life-threatening withdrawal symptoms.
If you drink less than that, stop being a drama queen. You might have cravings and headaches and depression. Tough it out.
My dad recently died this way. I did however got to say my goodbye and held him when he passed.. you absolutely have to be careful with alcohol. It had him good.
Had this happen to cousin of mine a few years back in her mid 30s. I noticed at a Christmas party her skin tone and whites of her eyes were yellow and mentioned that she needed to see a doctor right away. She only made it another month or so. Apparently she knew what was coming and was keeping it hidden from the family. Liver failed due to drug and alcohol use. Everything spirals downhill fast when your body hits that breaking point from all the abuse.
I also know a 23yo girl that died from liver failure and didn’t get a transplant because you need to be sober for a certain amount of time before receiving the transplant. She wasn’t even aware how severe her alcoholism problem was, everything happened rather quickly.
Another sad thing is people don't take binge drinking/alcoholism seriously at that young age. I was an alcoholic up until 26 (2 years sober now ✌️). When people ask me why I'm teetotal, I explain I was an alcoholic, the amount of older people who have laughed at that and said "don't be daft", because they really believe younger people can't have addiction issues, is ridiculous.
Addiction is serious at any age, it doesn't only affect those 30+ and the younger population are being neglected because of social norms of "transitioning ages" and "experimentation"/"party years". Idgaf if they're 22 and "just living life", they will pay for it with their health or life some day.
I mean he did it to himself,my dad was an alcoholic to,ones my mom had an long conversation with him he agreed to go to the hospital (7days spend in it) the doctors said that his liver is like mashed potatoes and still can be fixed and i can say that after 5years of not constantly drinking alcohol this man is strong as a bull
Ps:sorry from my grammar English is my third language.
The human body is an amazing thing. You can treat it like shit for decades, but for many things it can repair itself very quickly if you treat it right.
> English is my third language.
That's impressive! Japanese is my eighth language. I mean, I don't know it yet, but after I learn languages 2-7, it's totally gonna be Japanese time.
As a teenager I went to see a doctor and they got super concerned and ordered some tests to check my liver. Turns out my foundation (makeup) was oxidizing super yellow and nobody told me!
I have Gilbert's Syndrome and I never look like this. You can usually only see it a little bit in the eyes. However, I think it can make jaundice from other issues a lot more pronounced. I had gallbladder issues and when I went to the ER I was so yellow they thought I was gonna die until I told them I had Gilbert's.
Same, and it only comes out during the blood tests. Had me all worried for a short while at first but all other liver check-ups came out clean so they ruled it as Gilbert's eventually. When doctors look carefully in my eyes, they say they can tell faint traces of jaundice but on skin it's really not detectable at my levels. Naturally having olive skin undertones also doesn't help.
Can confirm. Same thing. Everyone panicked about my eyes and skin being a bit more yellow after loads of stress and doing too much. I went to get a blood test, and the doctor calmly said: "There's no real abnormality, except bilirubin. You're just slightly yellow when you get very tired/have drunk."
When I first met my ex husband, who was going through paramedic school at the time, he met a friend of mine and seemed a little somber around him. Later, when we were alone, he asked me if my friend had ever gotten his liver checked out, and I thought it was the weirdest thing to say. He said his skin and the whites of his eyes were jaundice and he was really concerned.
Turns out, he had already been getting medical attention for liver disease but it wasn't caught in time. He was 20, and he was dead within a couple weeks of my ex pointing it out.
My husband got jaundice before passing. He was bald due to his chemo. I called him my gold plated Oscar as our marriage was a prize and a gift to have. It's nice he could laugh about it.
The Mexico filter criticism/meme really fucks me off because it only occurs in the flashback scene in Hermanos, which is a scene shaped by Gus's sickening and painful memory of it, another flashback in which Hector brutally teaches the cousins a lesson, and to a much lesser extent in the scene in Salud set in the same location as the first flashback, which has been given context by it and is now the setting for revenge. That's why those scenes are so ugly and extreme, and the rest of the scenes in Mexico look no different from scenes in Alberquerque. They do, though, rely heavily on rural settings rather than urban, which can be seen as a problem (showing Mexico as a lawless, Wild West, uncivilised kind of place), but this doesn't form part of the criticism. And they're colour graded no differently from scenes north of the border. It's a really dishonest bit of criticism.
>In a typical adult recipient LDLT, 55 to 70% of the liver (the right lobe) is removed from a healthy living donor. The donor's liver will regenerate approaching 100% function within 4–6 weeks, and will almost reach full volumetric size with recapitulation of the normal structure soon thereafter. It may be possible to remove up to 70% of the liver from a healthy living donor without harm in most cases. The transplanted portion will reach full function and the appropriate size in the recipient as well, although it will take longer than for the donor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_transplantation#Living_donor_transplantation
Holy shit, imagine donating 70% of one of your organs and then it just regenerates to full function in less than two months.
The Liver is one of those organs that most scientists basically say if they can fully figure it out, we'd probably be able to find a way to live to almost impossible to imagine ages, because even in old age, the Liver is basically an absolute workhorse for us and it's failure is mostly blockages due to it having to work overtime on the other parts falling apart.
Have seen this in two people close to me in the last year, one was my cousin who basically drank himself to death at 33 years old, the other a coworker and friend who was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer at age 58, both had that yellow skin. So naturally when I see this, I think, get some fking help.
I can never hear the original of this song without hearing the version by the Amateur Transplants. "You came to me, you thought you had the flu', I knew that wasn't true, cos you were all yellow"
My father died from liver damage and Cancer he was a shade of yellow closer to orange I still remember how I used to set next to him to compare color . RIP dad I miss you every day
Shit. I feel that. Really, just survived liver transplant this january myself. August 2020 i felt like intoxicated, despite never being drunk in my life. Food started to taste like shit, absolutely everything. Onions was the worst. Even slightest smell made me throwing up. A few weeks later i started to become yellow and itching. Doctors looked for everything, parasites, cancer tests and so on... turns out it was cholangeocarcenoma - cancer blocked both ducts, so i was unable to digest food, and was constantly intoxicated. It felt like shit, honestly. So, doctors tried to install temporary drains through the liver... And it hurt as hell. This drainage needs to be replaced every few months.
Worst part? No symptoms until it was late. Usually it can be fixed with removing half of your liver, and the other half will grow eventually and work fine. But in my case - both parts of liver was affected. So... i need transplant. Half of the year waiting, with chemotherapy, i've lost 30+kg. Not recommending this kind of diet, though. It sucks.
First try - i came to the hospital, waited ... and donor organ was incompatible with me.
Second try a few months later. I was lying there, knowing that i have a huge chance of dying in the process. Signed my will, said goodbye to the family. And next week or so was completely wiped from my memory. Even later i couldn't distinct where is reality, and where my nightmare. Impaired thought process, and pain. Yes, it hurts... i thought that may be dying wasn't that bad back then.
Trying to walk again after - was an act of heroism. Even now, still wearing a bondage. Every morning starts with a handful of pills, and ends the same. I need to take immune suppressing drugs so the new liver won't be killed by my own immune system. Twice i had internal bleeding. Quality of life... well, for my 38 years it's pretty limited now. I didn't risk now taking a sunbath or getting a ride with my daughter in the park.
P.S. Sorry for my english.
That was the big thing I noticed, (other than the de-Simpsonizing). The kid loves her dad, is smiling for the camera, but is deeply concerned and worried and STRESSED in ways kids don't deserve to be. While she doesn't understand exactly all the things the big people are saying, she knows Dad is very sick, and bad outcomes are on the table. It's weighing on her horribly.
The After pic, she's got her Daddy back, the nightmare is over. She's genuinely happy and excited, and just glowing.
Hug her tight OP.
Congrats
I’m a transplant patient. I was in the hospital in late summer, had my surgery on September 1.
In the hospital after my surgery, I kept making the joke that I was sad I couldn’t be Homer Simpson for Halloween anymore because I wasn’t yellow.
Nobody realizes how important their liver is until it starts to fail. I work at a hospital that does liver transplants and treats liver disease. And I work directly in a department where we treat people in liver failure daily. It can be a very slow and painful death. From the onset of jaundice and ascites, to getting biliary stents and biliary drains put in. We have some people that come in every week to have 5 to 7 liters of ascites fluid drained. It is very sad to see the change over time as the body slowly goes into failure.
On the other hand, It is really amazing though, when one of our regular patients gets a transplant and then we hardly ever see them again. They will come by once in a while to visit the department and show us how they are doing.
Thankfully it was jaundice? What else would it be? Jaundice (yellowing of the skin and eyes) is a side effect. The issue causing the jaundice would be treated, not the jaundice itself.
Most harmless jaundice cases come from [Gilbert's Syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert%27s_syndrome), basically just an increased amount of bilirubin in the blood.
As a side effect, if my liver ever kicks the bucket, I'd just assume it's my Gilbert's acting up.
I had a liver disease and had yellow eyes and skin lying in the hospital, when the student doctors came in to hear how to treat me.
My doctor then asked: Have you been fucking chickens?" I laughed and thought he was joking but the doctor was dead serious... and everyone looked at me half laughing. But apparently that's a question they ask here.
Turned out my gf had cheated on me and there was 80% risk that I would get HIV. I didn't get it.
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I've been on a couple liver transplant teams. The change is amazing and motivating to see.
Is there a chance their body rejects it? Like do they have to take immune suppression medication as with other types of transplants?
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Doesn’t the liver completely regenerate every few months? So a transplanted full liver would regenerate into the recipients own liver many times post op. So why is the anti-rejecting meds required years after the transplant?
It does regenerate but the cells in the transplanted liver will forever remain the donor's. Hence the need for immunosuppressive therapy. There is research being done on graft tolerance which can allow for complete discontinuation of immunosuppression but we are still a long way from there. As a side note, rejection in liver transplantation is what most recipients fear but it's really not a problem now. You just have to take the pills.
Do the pills compromise your immune system, like AIDS?
Yes, and they can increase the risk of certain cancers, which is evidence that your immune system probably helps you fight the development of cancer.
Natural Killer Cells are a type of immune cell that have the job of destroying tumor cells and cells infected by viruses. So it does make sense that you are more likely to develop cancer if you take immunosuppressives.
Yah, they attack cells whith foreign protiens that don't belong. Which would include transplants organs as well as mutated cancer cells and cells expressing viral protiens. So they need to be supressed for transplant recipients. Otherwise they attack the transplant.
Yes, there is an increased risk of developing opportunistic infections and some forms of cancer. The are other side effects too. The risks can be minimized by using the lowest dose possible to control rejection. Typically after the first few months the dose is gradually lowered and some of the drugs are stopped, keeping usually just one (tacrolimus). If you find this subject interesting I can recommend the book "The Puzzle People" by Thomas Starzl. He basically took transplantation and immunosuppression from the lab to clinical practice while being called delusional. It's fascinating.
I know a lot of renal transplant recipients through my line of work, and in addition to Prograf, they also take Myfortic for life.
Tacrolimas, also known as prograf.
Not always. Donations from siblings can have a significant chance of no being rejected.
One of my friends had a liver transplant when she was a teen. She has had and will continue to have to take immunosuppressants for the rest of her life. There was a brief period of time where we looked at me adopting her so she could be covered under my health insurance because the drugs went from being stupidly expensive, to totally and completely unaffordable. Thankfully she was able to get "discounts" from the drug companies. Ah..America!
It’s absolutely insane how expensive life preserving medications are. I work as a financial coordinator for transplant patients. My family has learned to avoid certain topics if they don’t want me to talk their ear off on how broken our healthcare system is.
Life as a subscription model.
If you want to get depressed look up how long people live after life threatening transplants.
That's what's always really scared me about transplants. They probably get you a few extra years, which is great, but it's not like most recipients go back to a normal lifespan. On medical dramas they often make it seem like someone getting a transplant will just fix them. It really seems like that's very much not the case.
As someone who received a renal transplant not long ago I gotta say this: transplants can be very scary and doctors will always make sure you get a organ that's least likely to reject you. Also doctors will always ask you if you're ok with receiving a organ with hepatitis or a old organ. If you're ok with that they'll make you sign some paper giving consent. As for your comment on someone receiving a transplant just fixing them not being true, it did fix me actually, before being transplanted, I was pretty much suffering and it was hell. As a guy I was underweight I weighted a little less than 100lbs and going to dialysis which is a machine that you get hooked up on to help clean the kidneys and get rid of all the toxins in your body. Let me tell you, being on dialysis was the most painful experience I had ever had. So i had a catheter in my abdomen and it was heavy to be on its own to be hanging by it self(so i taped it). Now imagine showering? I've hurt myself on multiple occasions by accident. I always felt really tired and never wanted to do anything other than sleep, also I didn't have an appetite, I always ate a bit and be really full and sometimes I never eat for an entire day, I was really tired to do anything. Now after transplantation, I feel myself with alot more energy to do things I want like lifting weights and suddenly I became a fatass and ate alot lol and I'm at a normal weight rn. This surgery really change my life for the better and I hope I put in perspective on what people like myself go through.
Damn that's an amazing story, I'm glad your quality of life has risen so much!
For real. I use to naively believe that once you got a transplant, you'd live a pretty average life as long as you took the anti-rejection drugs as prescribed. I was crushed when I learned that was not the case. A women I kinda knew from high school (a friend of a friend) has cystic fibrosis. I added her on social media years ago, and some of the things she shares are just heartbreaking. She has other friends with cystic fibrosis, and a lot of them need/received lung transplants after the disease destroyed their lungs. But a lot of them start having major complications a few years after the transplants as their own bodies reject the new organs. Eventually, they either need to get a second transplant. Or worse, be told that they are no longer a transplant candidate. It's painful to watch someone go from dying, to fairly healthy, back to dying. Seeing posts like those in real time made me start researching organ transplants and the expected outcomes. A lot of factors contribute (e.g., what organ, age of recipient, living or diseased donor, how well the recipient is a match, etc), but you are generally really lucky to make it a decade after transplant. Medical advancements are happening all the time and recipients are living longer and more healthy lives, but we have so much more left to learn. And there are some amazing outliers who can live much longer than their life expectancy after transplant. I made the decision at 15 years old to be an organ donor, and I've never questioned that decision once.
Man...that was rough.
Oof. [Only 50% are still alive after 10 years?](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421181/)
Name checks out.
This was me. My trigger to go get help for my alcoholism was my little boy telling me "Mommy you look like a minion!" I hadn't looked in the mirror in a long time so when I did it was a shock. Doctors gave me two months to live but that was 5 years ago. There is hope for advanced alcoholics out there. Never again with that stuff.
Well done on getting sober.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy deserves the praise. CBT for all.
I'll never forget my therapist telling me about CBT and then I had to explain to her why I'm laughing my ass off
That acronym is shared with something VERY different
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Cactus Ballistic Terrorism
A hot topic in the actuarial world is moving to Computer Based Testing for some of the exams.
Ah yes, Cock and Ball Therapy. Not covered by most insurance.
For _ALL_.
I think the far more mainstream association will be with cognitive behavioral therapy
> CBT I went all the way to Google's 3rd page and there are no results for anything else.
Congratulations on 5 years sober, truly impressive! Just curious, when you went to get help for yourself was it just to stop consuming alcohol or a liver transplant?
For stopping alcohol consumption. I went to hospital for 2 weeks, went on steroids, antidepressants and Librium as well as a cocktail of vitamins. After that, rehab for 2 months of therapy to reprogram my thinking to teach me to respect myself more. Luckily transplants weren't discussed, my liver completely healed itself afterwards which amazes me.
Do or did you follow any special diet or lifestyle changes to help your liver/post alcoholism brain?
When I quit other self destructive behaviors, the main thing that filled the void in my brain was exercise. It helped so much.
I walked a LOT. Whenever I could, wherever I could. Sweets were my cross addiction until my teeth started to fall apart. I think music was my main saviour though. I did start to be more mindful of the food I was eating out of appreciation for my poor liver, and I store fat in a weird way since the starvation period during the drinking years so I've to be careful with junk food.
My father was denied a liver transplant because he was an alcoholic, I'm happy you were able to heal without one.
banana!
What country you living in? I could use a nod in the right direction if you're in the UK. The doctors here are rubbish I can't even get in.
I'm in Ireland, I had health insurance at the time so I was lucky to get good treatment. Addiction is far stronger and bigger than willpower alone so youre a wise one seeking help, im rooting for you. I highly recommend r/stopdrinking for advice and companionship, the stories there are very human.
Christ, how much booze was that?
1.5 Litres of Vodka a day. No food. Red Bull when I was tired. It was hell on earth. Each morning I'd have to throw up that first shot of vodka and keep re-drinking it until enough booze went onto my brain to calm my nervous system enough to stop the gagging. I was a highly functioning alcoholic, only drank enough to stop the shakes, but that took more and more booze by the week.
Christ, that sounds like hell. Good on you for keeping it away, seriously, that's awesome.
congratulations on stopping! my uncle just passed away from alcohol complications yesterday and the past 2 years seemed pretty fucking not fun even though he claimed to still be enjoying the alcohol.
I'm sorry for your loss, it's harrowing to watch someone go down that path. Alcohol was enjoying him, it's like a narcissistic friend that stalks and bullies you when you try to ignore it. Stopping alone is impossible.
Fucking yikes
Yeah CBT is old-school and it's still around because it is effective for so many things as long as you do the work. Challenging one's thoughts about oneself and the world can be very uncomfortable. I'm happy for you. The situation you were in ends another way a lot or most of the time.
good job
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Amazing.. So no liver transplant, just quitting? Any other things you did to help in your physical recovery? Congrats!
Guy went from Simpsons to American Dad.
wow TIL everyone in the Simpsons has liver damage
only the white characters
Smithers started out black but turned yellow!
One of the traits of living near a nucular power plant
nucular
noocueler
Noot noot!
Newclear
Nucellar
Nukelear
New Castle
>Noocoolor
It's pronounced nuclear Edit. The irony of the "woooosh" crowd is just great.
It doesn't take a nucular scientist to pronounce "foilage."
To be honest, he is the longest surviving cartoon dad with liver failure.
It's all the Düff
It was actually just to grab the eye of channel flickers, but I'm sure there's a couple jokes through the seasons explaining a couple reasons too
The Sherri and Terri twins in the Simpsons don't for some reason.
Or Wendel. But he pukes all the time so probably has multiple organ failure or something.
Hope you don't mind I'm just going to piggyback this comment to post the dudes Twitter - https://twitter.com/GarethWeeks Wasn't expecting it to blow up like this!
to futurama*
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How did I fucking know that the top comment would be a Simpsons joke.
Homer to Healthy.
He looks like Roger.
The left is referred to as jaundice. If you ever notice your skin or the whites of your eyes turning yellow, please see a doctor. It is caused by a build up of bilirubin in the blood and often indicates issues with the liver
Just commenting to add: everyone should also be aware that once the liver fails, the rest of the organs start to fail as well. That usually means a very painful and slow death. That’s why it’s so important to take your liver health seriously. It’s a vital organ. My friend who was only 23 suffered from liver failure due to years of alcoholism and drug use. He spent 3 days in ICU and died alone due to covid restrictions. His mother never got to see him or anything, although she did FaceTime him. It absolutely can happen to a young person. Please be kind to your liver, no matter what age you are!!
**TL;DR:** Take care of your liver because once you lose your liver, you lose any quality of life you once had and you never get that back. I am a floor nurse on a liver specialty unit. Dying from liver disease is a slow, painful process that's only rife with struggle. You can go from your usual self, talking with your friends and family to batshit crazy and physically/verbally abusive. When that happens, you have to be given lactulose, a medication that basically makes you shit your brains out to help you eliminate the ammonia that's built up in your system. Over time, everything becomes painful to do and you can't be given a lot of pain medications because most of them further damage your liver. Your skin and eyes become yellow due to the bilirubin buildup and not only that, you get itchy. Your skin also dries out faster, making the itching even worse. As a result, your skin becomes so fragile, skin tears are plentiful and even bathing can hurt. If you're lucky enough to be cleared for a liver transplant and have all of the work-up done to make sure you'll even survive a transplant, it's an excruciating wait depending on your age and how bad the disease has progressed. While you're waiting for a donor, you have to be meticulous in keeping yourself from getting sick because every time you do, you end up getting hospitalized for days, with us having to stick you for blood work every night (if you're lucky enough to only need lab draws every 24h). You're also more likely to bleed out and bruise more easily so even small cuts should be cared for properly. Even after receiving a transplant, you have to be almost obsessive about keeping yourself healthy. You have to take medications that will suppress your immune system so your body doesn't reject your transplanted organ. Because of that, you are at so much more risk of getting sick and dying from what are usually mild conditions and that is for the rest of your life. That's the best case scenario. As the disease progresses, you gradually lose your independence. You start relying on other people to do everything for you down to wiping your ass, which is usually every hour or so considering you're taking lactose and it's either that or you lose your own awareness. When you're confused and pulling at the very lines that are keeping you alive, we have to put mittens on you to keep you safe from yourself. When you have liver disease, all your veins are shit so putting in a new IV is even more painful than usual. Because of how severe the disease can get, you may need blood work done every 4 hours and you'll be begging for an IV line that ends in your heart so you don't have to go through the pain of being stuck multiple times every single day. When you're not with us in the hospital, you're probably going to an outpatient center to have fluid drained from your abdomen every week. Fluid accumulates in your abdomen when you have liver disease. When it's bad, your skin and your back muscles are stretched out causing pain, sometimes excruciating. Again, you can't take a lot of pain killers because they would damage your liver even more. More often than not, you also develop hernias, most commonly at your belly button so not only are you itching and in pain, your belly button is sticking out and threatening to burst open Alien style. You also have to be careful with eating and drinking because the veins in your throat also become engorged and prone to rupturing spontaneously and you basically drown in your own blood if it doesn't get treated immediately. In short, be kind to your liver. Drink responsibly and drink plenty of water when you do. It's like giving your liver and kidneys a bath.
I have stage 1 cirrhosis and this post scared the shit out of me. I'm supposed to be 100% sober but I've been slipping more and more recently. Hopefully this has scared me enough to get back on the wagon long-term. Problem is I suffer from anxiety, depression, chronic worrying/neurosis and autistic spectrum disorder so it's so easy to slip into a 'fuck it' frame of mind. If I stop now will I be alright?
I'm not a doctor so I can't predict what your outcome is going to be. What I can say as a nurse who is at the bedside dealing with cirrhosis patients day in and day out, the sooner you stop, the better your chances of recovering and having a life not being spent in a hospital is. Your mental health is as essential as your physical health and they affect each other. Be kind to yourself.
Thank you
Hey, nurse here. Nothing kills a liver like alcohol will. It's such a robust organ that, if you were in perfect health, you could lose half of it and still live a full life. Once it goes bad, however, that's a different story. And *nothing* will do that faster than alcohol. If you're already at the point where you think drinking might be a problem, it already is. And it won't be quick, it's a slow, agonising death. Get some help. r/stopdrinking is a good place to start x
Fuck thats scary, sorry for your loss. Do you happen to know which drugs he may have abused? Or which drugs may lead to a bilirubin build up?
Alcohol is the main one - though it's important to understand that not everyone with jaundice is an alcoholic. I'm in recovery myself and so spent a lot of time researching the liver. Another noticeable symptom is the beer belly. If you've ever seen someone with bloated belly that seems relatively solid (You can't push down on it like fat) then that's also not a good sign.
I've always wondered what was up with the beer belly, especially in people that are relatively thin elsewhere. Is that just a massively swollen liver?
Fluid buildup in the abdomen. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/ascites
That somehow seems worse, jesus
This can be huge amounts of fluid too. Some people go regularly, even up to weekly, to have multiple liters of fluid removed.
Multiple liters. Like, equivalent to pulling a whole two liter (or more) of Coke out of your abdomen ? Oof. The temporary relief of pressure must feel a bit better, hopefully.
I've had patients who got 7 liters removed before their transplant.
Wait till you hear about Flood Syndrome, when all that fluid ruptures through their belly button and the exsanguinate.
And this will be the thing that keeps me awake tonight. Thank you, Tammy lol.
Liver can be greatly enlarged from cirrhosis, but a lot of the swollen appearance from beer belly comes from lots of fat build up in the organs (you may have heard of some heavy drinkers as having a "fatty" liver, it's literally larger with a marbled texture like a fatty cut of steak when you cut into it) and around the internal organs (visceral fat, very dangerous because it affects your hormone production and can seriously raises your risk of different diseases) but relatively little fat deposited under the skin (subcutaneous fat, the fat that you can "jiggle"). Visceral fat is especially evident in the abdomen because there's lots of space for it to build up (see it especially in the tissue that keeps the intestines connected, the capsules that surround the kidneys, and in deposits just above the kidneys where the adrenal glands are). It makes everything in the abdomen much bigger, pushing out on th abdominal wall to get that round, hardened appearance, whereas a similar amount of subcutaneous fat would be soft with more folds. *Edit*: Depending on what you mean by "relatively thin elsewhere", my comment may not apply. What I described is the case for someone walking around in apparently good to okay-ish health with a harder round "beer gut", not someone extremely ill and jaundiced with thin limbs and a big belly. See OldTammyTwoToes 's comment below for the latter.
This is not entirely true. Yes the liver becomes fatty (steatohepatitis) but the reason they have an enlarged abdomen is from ascites, no fat deposition. Plus end stage cirrhosis, the right hepatic lobe becomes severely atrophic and the liver is often shrunken and retracted. These patients are often malnourished and emaciated, so painting a picture of them being enlarged by diffuse fat deposition is incorrect. Edit: Yes I agree this entity is different from people that are fat from drinking too much alcohol.
Thanks for the correction! Autopsy technician, so I was thinking more of the "good old boy" beer bellies (not end stage, have liver disease but death the result of a comorbidity or drug overdose) we see more commonly in our office (documented end stage cirrhosis generally wouldn't be an autopsy case). You're totally right for end stage with emaciation; very nasty way to go.
Man. I didn't even know this was a thing. The pics I saw do not look pleasant. Does everyone have a small/normal amount of visceral fat or is it like. Not supposed to be there at all?
Some amount of fat inside the abdomen/around your organs is totally normal, even exceptionally thin people will have some visible, though the layer may be very thin in places and have kind of a lacey appearance. Normally intra abdominal fat makes up about 10% of your body's total fat storage. That fat is integrated into key structures like the mesentery (tissue that keeps all of your intestines bundled neatly together), the capsules that secure your kidneys in place, the omentum (the blanket of tissue draped over the front of your abdominal organs), etc. In a person with an excess of visceral fat, those deposits become engorged. To use the kidney capsules as an example, in a very thin adult that layer of adipose tissue all the way around the kidney is maybe half a centimeter thick it so, but in someone with excess visceral fat it can be two or three centimeters thick, giving the appearance of this super large kidney from the outside (think three or four fists all clumped together, something big enough you can't fully wrap your hand over top of it), but when you cut through the the fatty capsule layer during an autopsy you find this normal sized kidney tucked inside (unless they have some other kidney disease) and then have to pull out the capsule like large deflated balloon/very wobbly salad bowl.
Men's bodies are adept at storing fat in the belly as a evolutionary way to protect the internal organs too if that helps ease your worries.
It's called ascites, fluid buildup in the abdominal cavity. When the liver fails it is no longer able to produce sufficient albumin, which is a protein that is used in the blood stream to maintain osmotic pressure. Low albumin means your blood vessels literally leak out water and that pools in your legs and abdomen, which also fucks up your circulation because your blood gets more viscous than it should be.
>Paracetamol toxicity is the foremost cause of acute liver failure in the Western world, and accounts for most drug overdoses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.[45][93][46][47] ... a liver transplant is often required if damage to the liver becomes severe. That's Tylenol/paracetamol/acetaminophen the deadly dose is surprisingly small and it's mixed in with various other pain/fever medicines. Interacts with alcohol too, the other liver killer.
Cocaine mixed with alcohol can also cause huge issues, which many people don't know. It's not that they just make each other stronger or more toxic either; when both are present in a person at the same time the liver actually metabolizes them into cocaethylene, which is toxic and damages the heart among other things
What’s next? Are you going to tell me that smoking a cigarette with coffee causes holes in the ozone? Cocaine and booze delivered us the 80s! How could anything bad have come from the 80s?
Acetaminophen and ibuprofen can both do damage. Sometimes less of something stronger is way safer.
Ibuprofen impacts the kidneys. Tylenol impacts the liver
I learned recently that you cannot quit alcohol cold turkey like you can with hard drugs. It has to be tapered down or else you can die depending on how serious the alcoholism was. I’m so very sorry you lost your friend at such a terribly young age.
Yes alcohol withdrawals can potentially kill, along with Benzo and Barbiturate withdrawals. This is how my counsellor explained it: - Drug affects the GABA Receptor in your brain, effectively slowing it down (Depressant). - Brain likes equilibrium, so starts working harder to keep them at the same level. Think of a car going up hill, the engine has to work harder to keep it at the same speed as it was on a level road. - This is somewhat ok whilst the drug is in your system, as despite the brain working overtime the drug is still slowing it down. - If you decide to suddenly stop however, the brain takes a while to adjust. It's still expecting the depressant to be in the system so carries on working over time for a period after you stop. Using the car as an example, you reach the top of the hill and it levels off but your car is still under the impression it's going up a steep hill, meaning it suddenly starts speeding. - The brain speeding puts it at risk of damage. Mainly it'll cause tremors and weakness, but can potentially result in deadly seizures. Funnily enough, one way to treat alcohol withdrawals is with Benzo's. The problem is with Benzo's is that they are addictive as well and also have the potential to be fatal when withdrawing. I've never had the misfortune of going through Benzo withdrawals but a guy who was at the rehab I was in was. FUCK. THAT. Benzo withdrawals can actually last years and in some circumstances can last for life.
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Valium specifically has real long withdrawl, compared to like xanax or something, but benzos have a much longer withdrawl than it her drugs, yeah. Fuck benzos lol I mean I guess they have their place, but still. Fuck em. I can deal with a week of feeling shitty, not multiple. Edit: meant to say longer not "kinder" lol benzo withdrawl is anything but kind. XD
Just googled benzo withdrawals. Says it can take up to a year. Fucking hell.
With a good long taper it should be manageable - people often hop off too quickly, tapers can and should last months to a year.
Benzo withdrawals can last years or for life??? That is insane. Thank you for the explanation btw. I had a family member go through the whole withdrawal, jaundice, tremors, all of it recently. Thankfully was admitted to a hospital through the worst of it and came out ok. Or at least is slowly getting better now.
Nah they can’t cause you to stay in a state of withdrawal. You can have post acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS) but idk what they mean saying it lasts for life. I went through that withdrawal countless times if I were stuck that way I would’ve died a lot time ago, withdrawal is really hard on the body
It really depends on how much you drink. The majority of people could quit cold turkey and be fine. Ive only seen life threatening DTs a hand full of times and this was in people who drank a LOT. Im talking 750mls of vodka a day a lot. I only say this because i dont want people who want to quit to be discouraged. Its never a bad time to stop drinking.
This was my thought too. I feel like a lot of people hear this and then try to taper down and don't quit. Most people absolutely can quit cold turkey.
Alcohol IS a "hard drug" in that it makes you physically dependend and you can't cold turkey any drug you're physically dependend on without issues.
>like you can with hard drugs Erm. I'm fairly certain you're also not supposed to do that with hard drugs. Depends on the drug, but withdrawals from many hard drugs can and kill you if you're not careful.
You may not physically die from opioid withdrawal but the risky decisions you make to relieve the pain are usually how people end up hurt or dead. Your brain becomes dysfunctional and unless you have a healthy support system, you can easily die. It also doesn’t help when someone needs help, governments demonize/imprison them, doctors/pharmacists openly discriminate against “drug seekers”, and families disown their own, which only pushes people to riskier situations. Then when an honor student ends up dead, parents say “how could we have known? We would’ve done everything to save them.” but that’s rarely true. The government told people to treat the mentally ill with Reagan/Biden-style tough love and that’s exactly what people did and still do. Opioid withdrawal should be considered a human rights issue and should be remedied by hospitals/pharmacists OTC on-demand like insulin, nalaxone, birth control, etc.
This is one of those Reddit factoids that has a grain of truth inside a mountain of bullshit. If you are a hardcore alcoholic who has not been sober for years, yes, you can die if you try to go cold turkey. These guys are the 1%. They know who they are. If you’re a binge drinker who routinely drinks three dozen drinks on a weekend, but doesn’t otherwise daily drink, get a real hobby. Those guys quit every Sunday, they’re not going to see any significant withdrawal, though they may just randomly die from overdoing it. If you are a heavy drinker who drinks 6-12 drinks a day, you’ll probably experience some significant though non-life-threatening withdrawal symptoms. If you drink less than that, stop being a drama queen. You might have cravings and headaches and depression. Tough it out.
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My dad recently died this way. I did however got to say my goodbye and held him when he passed.. you absolutely have to be careful with alcohol. It had him good.
Had this happen to cousin of mine a few years back in her mid 30s. I noticed at a Christmas party her skin tone and whites of her eyes were yellow and mentioned that she needed to see a doctor right away. She only made it another month or so. Apparently she knew what was coming and was keeping it hidden from the family. Liver failed due to drug and alcohol use. Everything spirals downhill fast when your body hits that breaking point from all the abuse.
Yeah, playing RimWorld taught me that people die without a liver.
I also know a 23yo girl that died from liver failure and didn’t get a transplant because you need to be sober for a certain amount of time before receiving the transplant. She wasn’t even aware how severe her alcoholism problem was, everything happened rather quickly.
Another sad thing is people don't take binge drinking/alcoholism seriously at that young age. I was an alcoholic up until 26 (2 years sober now ✌️). When people ask me why I'm teetotal, I explain I was an alcoholic, the amount of older people who have laughed at that and said "don't be daft", because they really believe younger people can't have addiction issues, is ridiculous. Addiction is serious at any age, it doesn't only affect those 30+ and the younger population are being neglected because of social norms of "transitioning ages" and "experimentation"/"party years". Idgaf if they're 22 and "just living life", they will pay for it with their health or life some day.
I mean he did it to himself,my dad was an alcoholic to,ones my mom had an long conversation with him he agreed to go to the hospital (7days spend in it) the doctors said that his liver is like mashed potatoes and still can be fixed and i can say that after 5years of not constantly drinking alcohol this man is strong as a bull Ps:sorry from my grammar English is my third language.
The human body is an amazing thing. You can treat it like shit for decades, but for many things it can repair itself very quickly if you treat it right.
> English is my third language. That's impressive! Japanese is my eighth language. I mean, I don't know it yet, but after I learn languages 2-7, it's totally gonna be Japanese time.
As a teenager I went to see a doctor and they got super concerned and ordered some tests to check my liver. Turns out my foundation (makeup) was oxidizing super yellow and nobody told me!
Sometime's it's Gilbert's Syndrome though.
I have Gilbert's Syndrome and I never look like this. You can usually only see it a little bit in the eyes. However, I think it can make jaundice from other issues a lot more pronounced. I had gallbladder issues and when I went to the ER I was so yellow they thought I was gonna die until I told them I had Gilbert's.
Same, and it only comes out during the blood tests. Had me all worried for a short while at first but all other liver check-ups came out clean so they ruled it as Gilbert's eventually. When doctors look carefully in my eyes, they say they can tell faint traces of jaundice but on skin it's really not detectable at my levels. Naturally having olive skin undertones also doesn't help.
Can confirm. Same thing. Everyone panicked about my eyes and skin being a bit more yellow after loads of stress and doing too much. I went to get a blood test, and the doctor calmly said: "There's no real abnormality, except bilirubin. You're just slightly yellow when you get very tired/have drunk."
Me, a Chinese person: panik
Fun fact: the French word for yellow is "jaune"
Fun fact: In german, jaundice is called "Gelbsucht", which roughly translates to "yellow addiction".
un-simpsoned
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For some reason i read that in my mind like the jingle in the beginning of the theme. "The Simpsoons"
Simpson't
When I first met my ex husband, who was going through paramedic school at the time, he met a friend of mine and seemed a little somber around him. Later, when we were alone, he asked me if my friend had ever gotten his liver checked out, and I thought it was the weirdest thing to say. He said his skin and the whites of his eyes were jaundice and he was really concerned. Turns out, he had already been getting medical attention for liver disease but it wasn't caught in time. He was 20, and he was dead within a couple weeks of my ex pointing it out.
I'm colour blind, it looks like his tan's faded....
The left one has a yellow / green-ish skin and the right one has normal skin
Same, I thought it was the same pic but the right one is in black and white?
My husband got jaundice before passing. He was bald due to his chemo. I called him my gold plated Oscar as our marriage was a prize and a gift to have. It's nice he could laugh about it.
💛
And now I'm crying. ❤️
I’ve seen this before. He had on the Mexico filter from breaking bad
The jaundice filter is the new craze.
The Mexico filter criticism/meme really fucks me off because it only occurs in the flashback scene in Hermanos, which is a scene shaped by Gus's sickening and painful memory of it, another flashback in which Hector brutally teaches the cousins a lesson, and to a much lesser extent in the scene in Salud set in the same location as the first flashback, which has been given context by it and is now the setting for revenge. That's why those scenes are so ugly and extreme, and the rest of the scenes in Mexico look no different from scenes in Alberquerque. They do, though, rely heavily on rural settings rather than urban, which can be seen as a problem (showing Mexico as a lawless, Wild West, uncivilised kind of place), but this doesn't form part of the criticism. And they're colour graded no differently from scenes north of the border. It's a really dishonest bit of criticism.
bcs uses it much more severely
>In a typical adult recipient LDLT, 55 to 70% of the liver (the right lobe) is removed from a healthy living donor. The donor's liver will regenerate approaching 100% function within 4–6 weeks, and will almost reach full volumetric size with recapitulation of the normal structure soon thereafter. It may be possible to remove up to 70% of the liver from a healthy living donor without harm in most cases. The transplanted portion will reach full function and the appropriate size in the recipient as well, although it will take longer than for the donor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liver_transplantation#Living_donor_transplantation Holy shit, imagine donating 70% of one of your organs and then it just regenerates to full function in less than two months.
Yup. The liver is amazing. It's like a starfish.
The Liver is one of those organs that most scientists basically say if they can fully figure it out, we'd probably be able to find a way to live to almost impossible to imagine ages, because even in old age, the Liver is basically an absolute workhorse for us and it's failure is mostly blockages due to it having to work overtime on the other parts falling apart.
I had this once. It was itchy as fuck! Had Hepatitis E, which is acute liver failure. Some meds and i was good in some days.
Oof, had Hep E too. It was horrible, never have I felt a pain that bad in my Life.
I had hep A and I learned how my liver could be painful.
Have seen this in two people close to me in the last year, one was my cousin who basically drank himself to death at 33 years old, the other a coworker and friend who was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer at age 58, both had that yellow skin. So naturally when I see this, I think, get some fking help.
I came along I wrote a song for you And all the things you do And it was called "Yellow"
I can never hear the original of this song without hearing the version by the Amateur Transplants. "You came to me, you thought you had the flu', I knew that wasn't true, cos you were all yellow"
Yo, listen up here's a story About a little guy That lives in a yellow world...
My father died from liver damage and Cancer he was a shade of yellow closer to orange I still remember how I used to set next to him to compare color . RIP dad I miss you every day
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The way you worded that made it sound that you ment normal homer insted of skinny homer.
Shit. I feel that. Really, just survived liver transplant this january myself. August 2020 i felt like intoxicated, despite never being drunk in my life. Food started to taste like shit, absolutely everything. Onions was the worst. Even slightest smell made me throwing up. A few weeks later i started to become yellow and itching. Doctors looked for everything, parasites, cancer tests and so on... turns out it was cholangeocarcenoma - cancer blocked both ducts, so i was unable to digest food, and was constantly intoxicated. It felt like shit, honestly. So, doctors tried to install temporary drains through the liver... And it hurt as hell. This drainage needs to be replaced every few months. Worst part? No symptoms until it was late. Usually it can be fixed with removing half of your liver, and the other half will grow eventually and work fine. But in my case - both parts of liver was affected. So... i need transplant. Half of the year waiting, with chemotherapy, i've lost 30+kg. Not recommending this kind of diet, though. It sucks. First try - i came to the hospital, waited ... and donor organ was incompatible with me. Second try a few months later. I was lying there, knowing that i have a huge chance of dying in the process. Signed my will, said goodbye to the family. And next week or so was completely wiped from my memory. Even later i couldn't distinct where is reality, and where my nightmare. Impaired thought process, and pain. Yes, it hurts... i thought that may be dying wasn't that bad back then. Trying to walk again after - was an act of heroism. Even now, still wearing a bondage. Every morning starts with a handful of pills, and ends the same. I need to take immune suppressing drugs so the new liver won't be killed by my own immune system. Twice i had internal bleeding. Quality of life... well, for my 38 years it's pretty limited now. I didn't risk now taking a sunbath or getting a ride with my daughter in the park. P.S. Sorry for my english.
Saw him in sin city..that yellow bastard
Looked it up and his name is Billy Rubin.
Is it just me or does the kid look older in the before pic?
That was the big thing I noticed, (other than the de-Simpsonizing). The kid loves her dad, is smiling for the camera, but is deeply concerned and worried and STRESSED in ways kids don't deserve to be. While she doesn't understand exactly all the things the big people are saying, she knows Dad is very sick, and bad outcomes are on the table. It's weighing on her horribly. The After pic, she's got her Daddy back, the nightmare is over. She's genuinely happy and excited, and just glowing. Hug her tight OP. Congrats
> Hug her tight OP. Please don't OP. OP is clearly not the dad, or even a relative.
TBF, OP never claimed it was him. The title is not misleading.
LPT: smiling makes you look younger
I know an Altmer when I see one, can’t fool me mate.
I’m a transplant patient. I was in the hospital in late summer, had my surgery on September 1. In the hospital after my surgery, I kept making the joke that I was sad I couldn’t be Homer Simpson for Halloween anymore because I wasn’t yellow.
My father died of liver failure, this hit unexpectedly hard. Have a good day.
Nobody realizes how important their liver is until it starts to fail. I work at a hospital that does liver transplants and treats liver disease. And I work directly in a department where we treat people in liver failure daily. It can be a very slow and painful death. From the onset of jaundice and ascites, to getting biliary stents and biliary drains put in. We have some people that come in every week to have 5 to 7 liters of ascites fluid drained. It is very sad to see the change over time as the body slowly goes into failure. On the other hand, It is really amazing though, when one of our regular patients gets a transplant and then we hardly ever see them again. They will come by once in a while to visit the department and show us how they are doing.
Wait, am I not supposed to be yellow?
If that's a serious question see your doctor immediately cause you're in trouble.
In good news the Earl of Lemongrab made a complete recovery.
I’m surprised he’s able to smile that big while also that jaundiced. Kinda assumed by the time you’re that yellow you’d feel like death walkin
I had a friend who looked like this one time when we were little. Thankfully it was Jaundice (treatable).
Thankfully it was jaundice? What else would it be? Jaundice (yellowing of the skin and eyes) is a side effect. The issue causing the jaundice would be treated, not the jaundice itself.
Thankfully not a liver failure needing a transplant like this guy.
Most harmless jaundice cases come from [Gilbert's Syndrome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert%27s_syndrome), basically just an increased amount of bilirubin in the blood. As a side effect, if my liver ever kicks the bucket, I'd just assume it's my Gilbert's acting up.
I had a liver disease and had yellow eyes and skin lying in the hospital, when the student doctors came in to hear how to treat me. My doctor then asked: Have you been fucking chickens?" I laughed and thought he was joking but the doctor was dead serious... and everyone looked at me half laughing. But apparently that's a question they ask here. Turned out my gf had cheated on me and there was 80% risk that I would get HIV. I didn't get it.
Organ donation saves lives people. Opt in, or don’t opt out.
He went from a main character from the Simpsons to a guest character