Before you know it, you're the crazy cat lady in the scary house

There's No Place Like Home

November 24, 2003 ... 6:36 p.m.

No, I haven’t forgotten to update. I haven’t been able to. I have been in the hospital since the 15th.

Bootsie told me I was a wee bit jaundiced before I went to my doc for my ear infection, but I thought she was just teasing. She wasn’t. In the following week, I became seriously jaundiced and exhausted. I wasn’t keeping anything down--not even water!

On the advice of my doc, I went to a local ER and got all kinds of bloodwork done.

The doctors first thoughts were that I was having a rare-but-documented side effect called a Toxic Injury from Zithromax. That didn’t seem to pan out.

I was going into liver failure. At one point, my billirubin count was 21.8. In a healthy person, 1 is considered “high”. 30 is the point of brain damage.

On the 19th, I started to get test results back. I didn’t have this, this, this or that. What was wrong, they had no clue.

On the 20th, I underwent a liver biopsy. Those samples were sent to the U of Iowa’s liver disease guru. He didn’t know what was wrong. He thought it might be a toxic injury from Zithromax or it could be an Auto-Immune disease, where my body just turned on my liver. I showed signs of both. It was decided that I would be put on the steroid Prednisone. If it was Auto-Immune, I should show immediate improvement. If it was toxic injury, the Prednisone shouldn’t have much effect. I showed immediate, drastic improvement.

What that means is that I have an Auto-Immune Liver Disease. It will take another month of testing to find out exactly which Auto-Immune disease it is. This is a chronic condition. I will have it the rest of my life. There may be occasional flare-ups, there may never be another incident. It is something I need to watch. IF my kind flares up a lot, for no apparent reasons, I may need a transplant. At some point in the future. For now, I’m taking the Prednisone for a month and something called Urso for 2 weeks.

I feel pretty good now. The only weird thing is that I absolutely cannot stand Mountain Dew anymore. Go figure.

I kept a diary while I was hospitalized and I’ll type it up and post it in the near future.

Oh... and I’m not contagious or anything. So, if I send you a Christmas card, you don’t need to steam it.

Also, my doctor told me I shouldn’t get pregnant in the next 3 months, to allow my liver to heal.

Aw, nuts. Now I have to rearrange all my New Year’s Eve plans.

[eta: Months later, it turned out that it WAS a toxic injury]

Currently Reading:

Listening To: ELVIS...I guess I’ll never know the reason why you love me as you do...

Have a happy day!

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