A friend of mine is very sick

I have a friend who was admitted to the hospital on New Years Eve.  She suddenly turned jaundice.  They didn't mess around with any of the county hospitals.  They sent her straight to Loyola.

We'd lost touch with her over the years.  She essentially cut us out of her life.  Though to be honest, we didn't make much of an effort to keep in touch.  She had Gastric Bypass surgery back in 2000.  She lost a lot of weight.  She became an alcoholic.  She drank a lot.  Nobody really knew the extent of it.  But it's been going on for years.  Initially, she told people that she had Hep a.  But the doctors diagnosed her with alcoholic hepatitis, presumably based on labs and a liver biopsy.

I've been doing a lot of research since tuesday.  The doctors did not say that she has cirrhosis of the liver.  They said it was alcholoic hep.  But this is where it gets confusing for me.  They are telling her that she is not getting any better, and that most likely there is nothing that can be done.  They've given her a 10 percent chance of living past the next three months.  All my research indicates that though alcoholic hepatitis is certainly a serious conditions, it is definitely something from which the liver can at least partially heal itself.  So what could or would cause such a dire prediction of survivablility in this case?

I am not family, so I cannot get too much information.  This is all very frustrating for us, because we feel like we're getting information that doesn't jive with what we've been reading during our research.

Please, enlighten me.

Thank you.

Hugs,

Connie

Mama Lama here.

There is a website of the mayo clinic that gives life expectancy for alcoholic hepatitis based on current MELD score.  This is a calculation from a persons lab tests.  Specific their bilirubin, INR and creatinine.  You can look those words up...high bilirubin is what makes a person jaudinced and their urine dark (almost brown)...INR is about how long it takes for  blood to clot, and creatinine has to do with the breaking down of muscles I think.

It is the MELD score that determines if you are ill enough for transplant.  The scores are generally over 22 to geet one.  IF you are well enough.

When your MELD score is 24 as my hubby has been running, the mortality rate is about 40% in 90 days. 

His doctor told him in October that if he continued to drink he would be GONE in 3 months. He has not had a drop since September and he is still with us. Though very unwell. Sometimes he is home and walking around and doing things...going to grocery store, movies, even a movie or two. Other times he is in the bed, on the couch.

 He is in the hospital about a week a month.

But without transplant at this point he might not make it. 

Each person is different.  He has cirrhosus and Hep C, and was an alcoholic for years, so he did a lot of damage before he started trying to GET WELL.

Best to your friend. 

Mama Lama.

She is being treated by a hepatologist.  But they also have a group of kids that go around and go over test results and the like with patients.  I should not be so mean about that.  They all look like kids to me, but they do have their medical degrees and licenses to practice medicine.  They must have done something right.  And I guess the hepatologist breezes in and out on his own schedule.  I am assuming that the kids don't speak without the "liver specialist" telling them what to say.  Doctors (at least the ones that I've come across) never seem to take the human spirit and the will to live into consideration when coming up with their diagnoses.  But then how can you quantify the unquantifiable?

I have asked my wife to talk to our friend's sister, and let her know that the MELD score would be a useful piece of information for us to have.  I am sure that I will have more questions once we know that.

Aside from the fact that it's just plain scary, what is worrisome about coughing up blood?  I mean I know that something like that is never a good thing.  But how does it factor into what my friend is going through?

ML, I messed up what constitutes MELD, too.  I've corrected it.

Hugs,

Connie