When I say "My Husband Beat Cirrhosis"... I want to make it very clear.... that doesn't mean he didn't get a BEAT DOWN in the process! I'm sooo grateful that it didn't kill him... but sadly, I do believe cirrhosis did shorten his life - quite a lot, because he had so much damage done to his system (in my opinion there is a lot more he could have done in the last 3 years but he went through phases of being stubborn and not wanting to take supplements, etc, and it really cost him). You absolutely need to be aware of this. Cirrhosis is an extremely serious condition that can kill you, and if it doesn't kill you, there's a good chance it will speed up the aging process (in a way that cannot be reversed) and it can damage your DNA!
But despite the fact that he didn't always do every single thing he possibly could, he still did really well overall! And we learned about a lot of things that helped him to beat cirrhosis.
My husband loves to watch MMA. Sometimes it's hard for me to watch, but every once in a while I will go into the TV room while he's watching a match, and see part of a fight. It never ceases to amaze me, what a high tolerance men have for watching other men get the crap kicked out of them!At the end of every MMA fight, someone is always declared a winner. Somehow, my husband can almost always predict who the winner's going to be, but I am so grossed out, looking at the blood all over both fighters, and all over the floor... I just keep thinking, why do they even DO this??? But maybe I'm drawn to things that freak me out, because I'm planning to take a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class : ).
During every fight, both sides almost always get a beat-down (well... unless you're Amanda Nunes). Some fighters get more beat up than others, but a winner is always chosen.
When it comes to cirrhosis, I absolutely believe my husband was the winner in that fight. But that doesn't mean cirrhosis didn't give him a serious smackdown!
My husband has this thing, where he has always said he wants to live to be 105. And for a long time, I really believed that could be possible.
But the other day I caught myself saying, I will feel very happy if he lives to be 75 or 80. And after I said it, I realized, wow... so what I am essentially saying is.. I believe cirrhosis stole about a quarter of his life. He was 50 when he was hospitalized 3 times. So I can't help looking at it like, he might have been able to buy twice as much time, if his body didn't have to sustain the damage that it did, during that year things got REALLY bad.
When I looked at THIS POST I made, in 2014, I realized, I need to put a warning on that page, making it super clear to people that just because you are able to heal from cirrhosis in a year or two... that doesn't mean your body will completely go back to normal. Some people might go back to normal, and some people might not, and sadly some people will never know until it's too late. Many people wait too long, hoping they're going to be in the "might go back to normal" category, only to find out... they're in the other category, and the "bounceback" phase is OVER.
When I re-read that post, I remembered how elated and happy I was, that we were getting such fast results, compared to people who had DIED from cirrhosis! While he was recovering from cirrhosis, slowly over the course of a year, we truly thought we were taking the fastest route possible. We had NO IDEA there was something out there that could help his body to detox way faster!
Yes, I'm extremely grateful he survived, his MELD score went down to as low as it can go, he's off all his medications, he can run a mile in about 8 1/2 minutes and go on 12 mile hikes. But I can't help wishing that he could have turned this situation around SOONER! And I can't help but feel envious of people like Amy's sister, and Ricky, who found out about the Detox water I keep talking about, and were able to turn their situation around so quickly, they didn't end up with that same kind of damage my husband was left with. I feel like people who get to start on the water early are like Amanda Nunes. She didn't just win the women's MMA championship by accident. She got help. She was trained by the best trainers and she worked her butt off to defeat Ronda Rousey (I'm still a big fan of Ronda Rousey though - for setting a precedent in women's sports).
If you could see before and after photos of my husband's face, you'd see why I say he didn't get out of this fight unscathed... cirrhosis aged him. To the point where he doesn't like to be in pictures anymore. He used to be that guy who'd purposely photo bomb other peoples' pictures, and now he feels like he doesn't want to be anywhere near a camera. It literally changed the structure of his face. His eyes are more sunken in, because he lost bone in his face. His body was unable to absorb calcium, while he had a cirrhotic liver. Maybe that wouldn't be so bad for a few months, but over the course of a year... it can leave you with some serious long term damage. Believe me, I am still looking for ways to undo all the damage, but it's been 3 years of research and I'm STILL looking!
Although I am not able to make the statement that the detox water had anything to do with my husband's cirrhosis... I challenge you to find ONE CASE of anyone who got their MELD score to go from a 15 to a 6, in 6 and a half weeks, from any other method. And that's what Amy's sister was able to do, after she started drinking it! And I've had many other people get incredible results as well (but Amy's sister is my best testimonial so far). You can see other testimonials on this page. Did these people get their results by chance, by luck, or just crazy coincidence? Yeah right. That's like saying Amanda Nunes won the women's MMA championship by luck. The fact is, people who make the greatest effort get the best results!
I wrote a post last year, about the mentality of the people who beat cirrhosis (and their caretakers). If you want to beat this disease (or if you want a loved one to beat it), you have to have the right mindset, and look at cirrhosis like it's your opponent, and the HELL if you're going to let them take you down!!!
Long term toxin exposure and liver impairment leads to long term damage that may not be reversible.
I do want to say that in 2011 when my husband had cirrhosis, he seemed to turn things around pretty quickly with extreme nutrition (though it cost us a lot of money, it was worth it). But in 2013/2014... it wasn't so easy to turn things around. I kept waiting for him to bounce back, like a rubber band, like he did in 2011, but this time... he didn't. He was like a rubber band that had lost it's elasticity. This time his cirrhosis was more progressed, and this time he was experiencing mental confusion, which I now realize is a SERIOUS danger sign.
When the liver is cirrhotic, and your MELD score is anywhere above a 6, your body is actually aging, very rapidly. When you are at the point that you are starting to notice mental confusion, that is because you have ammonia in your body, and ammonia is extremely damaging and toxic to body tissues. (CLICK HERE to see why). As if that's not bad enough on it's own, you get the double whammy in the fact that the liver can no longer produce substances that allow it to keep from aging (I have a lot more details on this process that I can show you, if you request more info about the water). These substances can be purchased in pill form, but when I looked up a controlled study on it the strongest one, I found that the subjects with cirrhosis had no results using it. Apparently, it's somehow better for your body to produce it's own. But if your liver is cirrhotic, you just can't make the stuff on your own, and you'll start aging rapidly. In 2011, my husband did look like he'd aged rapidly, but I guess that because he bounced back so well, I thought he would again in 2013... but I was wrong.
Please keep in mind, extreme cellular damage is one of those things that can't be reversed when it gets to a certain point (and many people with cirrhosis do get to that point). The normal aging process causes this, but Stage 4 cirrhosis can speed it up 20x. If there was a way to actually reverse the aging process, I'd definitely be doing it, and we'd all be doing it. Movie stars who have access to millions of dollars to spend on anti-aging products, would never look older. I haven't figured out how turn back this process yet (and I do a LOT of research) but hey if you figure out how to do it, please let me know!
Sometimes people get annoyed about the water machine being "too expensive" (as if I am the one who set the price)! To me that is just insane. In my mind, that thing was DIRT CHEAP. If someone continues to complain, then at that point I just have to let them go find out for themselves, how expensive CIRRHOSIS is. The only way they're really going to figure it out, is to go down that road.
For a long time I said that, when I tallied everything up, we were looking at a quarter million dollars in expenses that were related to cirrhosis (that's nothing...I know of a guy who said he lost a million dollars... and sadly, he died last year). But now, I actually think our personal tally is a lot higher than $250k. Because when my husband was hospitalized, we had to stop paying a lot of bills, we were late on everything, including our taxes. We got severely penalized, financially, and our interest rates for everything went through the roof. So tack on at least another $50K to my original estimate.
And keep in mind that $300,000.00 does not even include the cost of a liver transplant, which we were firmly against. I still do absolutely believe that the route my husband chose - to fix his own liver, vs. getting a transplant, was the best option for him in the long run. You can see my opinions about transplants, in these posts:
When you consider the fact that a transplant is about $577,000.00, and anti-rejection drugs (which can cost $3,000 per month... possibly for the rest of your life) lower your immune system (so they can make you feel tired) and they can put you at a much higher risk for diabetes and cancer (and they can even cause more scar tissue in your new liver), and the fact that a transplanted liver typically lasts just 5 years in 70% of patients (longer if a living donor is used but when you consider how badly it affects the donor).....I absolutely believe he picked the better route.
I just wish we'd known there was something that could have helped him a lot faster.
Ellie
No comments:
Post a Comment