Posted by Kath on August 16, 2000, at 9:40:32
In reply to Re: Problems with Alcohol - Reasons to Stop (long), posted by allisonm on August 15, 2000, at 21:36:29
Hi Allison,
Thank you so much for sharing the tremendously painful story. I'm going to print it out to have on hand if I even need to show it to someone. Thank you for repeating the terrible details of what your Mother went through.
I know you said you weren't asking for sympathy, but I hope it's okay for me to say that I feel for you having had to go through this. I'm sorry you lost your Mom in such a tragic way. Thank you for the fact that by sharing her story, you may have helped save lives.
Warm thoughts, Kath
> To those struggling with a drinking problem,
> I wish you all the best in what may become a lifelong battle. I have seen how very hard it is to stop.
>
> Dying from cirrhosis can be a slow process. You might develop a red nose. You might not. My mother didn't, but her skin and the whites of her eyes turned yellow. She used to tell me that the drops she took for glaucoma made her eyes yellow. She didn't think I knew she was drinking or how much, but that is one of the insidious things about addiction: it blinds people to what's happening around them. They think they can hide it. Family members wonder and worry for awhile. Eventually they learn all of the signs. Then they become silent watchdogs, listening to every inflection in the voice on the phone, listening for slurred words, watching a misstep down the hall, looking for hidden bottles, smelling the dirty glasses in the sink, smelling breath after a kiss goodnight, a hug goodbye or whenever they can get close enough. Family members know more than you think. You are fooling yourself if you don't think they know.
>
> Maybe a change in liver enzymes is enough of a scare for some. It was not for my mother. She used to boast that the liver could regenerate itself, and it can to a point.
>
> My mother had a drinking problem when I was quite young. She was hospitalized with cirrhosis in 1973 when I was in 6th grade. When I was in high school and college, she would become incoherent almost every night. She didn't hide it. After her father died in 1987, my mother drank continually, but she was hiding it. I was living in another state and didn't see the signs. She started feeling like she had the flu. The veins in her stomach and her esophagus enlarged and she began to bleed internally. She started to vomit blood uncontrollably and had bloody diarrhea. I cannot really describe what a bathroom can look like after something like this happens. Blood is splattered high on the walls, all over and around the toilet, all over the floor. It looks like a murder scene. You cannot imagine.
>
> The protein from blood in the stomach will overload a damaged liver and shut it down. Bilirubin and ammonia levels rise to toxic levels because the liver cannot eliminate them. Blood loss leads to a drop in blood pressure. My mother went into cardiac arrest in the emergency room. They broke her front teeth out when they put the breathing tube down her throat. She was in a coma for three days. She could not breathe well on her own, so I had to authorize a tracheotomy, which she endured for three weeks. I will never forget the fear in her eyes as she looked at me while they wheeled her to the OR. She developed pneumonia in both her lungs and an infection that damages heart valves.
>
> When the liver stops working, it becomes a waiting game. Doctors cannot tell you whether it will start working again. There is no magic test. You have to sit and wait and wait as they check the toxin levels in the blood over and over until some change is detected. It can take days before a verdict is reached. If the liver does not recover, the toxins build up in your system and your skin turns an unnatural ochre green. You fall into a coma. Your breathing becomes labored. You die. I learned that from a column someone wrote for the Washington Post about watching their own mother die of liver failure from alcohol abuse. Doctors wouldn't tell me when I asked them what would happen.
>
> My mom was in coronary intensive care for three weeks and another week in a regular hospital room, but she survived. Insurance only paid a small part, and my mother was left with a $37,000 hospital bill in 1988. None of this deterred her from continuing to drink. She was in and out of rehab over the next 10 years. She never was able to stick with AA because it made her feel guilty and bad. She tried very hard. I'll never know how much she really struggled with her addiction. She told me once that the longest she was ever able to stay completely sober was one 9-month period.
>
> She was arrested once for DWI. I had her arrested once for endangering herself: her blood-alcohol level was .33 and it took 18 hours for her to sober up in the hospital. She agreed to rehab again, but didn't work. She was angry with me for a long time after that.
>
> Eventually her liver function became bad enough that not alcohol, but a bleeding ulcer shut her liver down. More vomiting of blood, another coma, another waiting game. When she toppled, drunk, over a chair in her house and suffered a compound fracture in her ankle in 1995, the doctors could only use pins or screws. They wanted to put in a plate, but said that it would have been too dangerous with her reduced liver function. When she developed cancer and lost a breast a couple of years later, it was riskier surgery and breast reconstruction was not an option. She qualified for a liver transplant, but would not consider it. I think she knew that she would not take good care of a new liver.
>
> In the last few years of her life, she was hospitalized about every six months. Even a simple mineral deficiency would put her in the hospital, incoherent from the elevated level of ammonia in her system.
>
> Because her liver could not clear her medications at a regular pace, the antidepressants she'd started taking in 1998 built up in her system and she complained about being woosy and unsteady on her feet. I had just started taking ADs and didn't know a lot about them. I suggested that she ask to switch to a different one or to a lower dose. Her doctor was not paying attention. I think he had given up. Not long after, she fell and hit her head on a curb downtown. A few days later she was dead. All I know from the man painting her house and the neighbors' accounts was that she wasn't feeling well that day and had decided to lie down on the couch for a time. At one point she called her doctor's office. I know this because there was a message on her answering machine saying that an ambulance was on its way. She went into cardiac arrest in the ambulancce and died in the emergency room. She was 62. Her doctor and I decided not to bother with an autopsy. Whether it was a blood clot from her previous fall or something else, it didn't really matter. All of it was due to so many years of drinking.
>
> I don't bring this up to garner any sympathy. I've had my fill over the last two years. I've pretty much dealt with my mother's death. I've detailed her life here with the hope that her story might help someone who still has a chance to get help and stop drinking before it's too late. Ultimately, you should do this for yourself. If you cannot stop for yourself, please try to see what you are (or could be) putting your family through.
>
> Again, good luck and all best wishes.
>
> allison
>
>
>
poster:Kath
thread:42413
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000811/msgs/43069.html