Blood Ammonia Testing - Wish This could be Easier and More Affordable

Hepatic Encephalopathy is a very serious matter that, it seems like, very few of us are thoroughly warned about in advance.

My husband's gastroenterologist just kind of said, "Watch out for confusion." That was it. No prescription for lactulose. No follow up. Oh yeah, and he told my husband to eat meat. Lots of it. As much as he could get in his body, basically.

Well, this caused him to crash and total his car. And what's really frightening is, there is a VERY fine line between, when a person is "dazed and confused," to that point where they've developed."full blown encephalopathy." It's like you can go from the Fatigue Zone to Zombietown, overnight!

Tonight, after talking to a guy who shared my frustration over the fact that it's difficult to detect when encephalopathy will occur, I said, hey, I should check online and see if they make a machine that tests for blood ammonia levels. I was hoping I might find something small, cheap and easy to use on a regular basis, like one of those little diabetes machines that monitors a person's blood sugar.

Well, this was the closest thing I've found (see video below), and i seems a bit fancy (and therefore, probably a bit pricey). But hey, maybe someone would be interested in buying one of these. I might write to a few companies to see if they could possibly make a smaller, cheaper unit, and remind them that 25,000 people die from cirrhosis every year, and 300,000 are hospitalized. It's not like there's no market for this type of thing!  If I can find a cheaper model, I will post it here, later.

Ellie