MelindaFlowers

Oh my gosh, this ended up being really long but here it is....

I've been right where you are....

Condensed version: alcoholic for ten years. Nightly and heavily. Diagnoses with similar enzymes to yours (200+ age 31). Alcoholic hepatitis. Kept drinking. Stopped at 32. Given clean bill of health at 33 with 15 months of sobriety. Been sober 2 years. Never drinking again. Dodged bullet)

Hello,

I’ve been exactly where you are and since I’m here typing this that means I’m still here to tell my story. I drank like you for about 10 years. It was every day and I’d reckon about 90 units a week spread out evenly over seven nights. I never skipped a night. For three years or so I started to feel a slight “feeling” on my right side under my rib cage. Some days it would be there. Some days it wouldn’t. It worried me but I figured if I could deny that it was there just enough, then perhaps it would go away. Did I stop drinking? Are you kidding? I was 28 at the time and thought about all the stories I’ve read of people who drank for 30 years before they stopped? I’d been drinking about eight years. So it couldn’t have been that serious, right? Sometimes it would go away for a month. Sometimes it would be “there” every day of the month. It wasn’t as much of an actual pain as it was a feeling, a tenderness.

But what was it?

I wondered about this every day. What was it? I couldn’t ask my doctor about it because then he’d ask me how much I drank and I wasn’t about to answer that question. I knew if I lied then the bloodwork would maybe show something. So I went on drinking every night, hungover every day, drinking every night, hungover every day.

I drank for three years with this mysterious pain under my right rib cage and it slowly but surely go worse. It also radiated to my back sometimes and sometimes even went to the left side. But it was pretty constant on the right side. The last year of my drinking I would often wake up at 3 AM and the pain was more pronounced at that hour of the night. I’d pretty much just pray that I’d be okay, swear off drinking the next night, and drink the next night.

Fast forward to 2013. “When’s the last time you had bloodwork done?” my doctor asked me. If hearts could sink to your feet my heart would have sunk to my feet. “Ummm, five years ago?” This was true. I had bloodwork done five years prior and it was clean as a whistle. Healthy. She ordered a bloodwork panel and told me I had three months to get it done and come back in three months with the results.

I gave myself ninety days to sober up and give my body to heal whatever was wrong with it. I knew there was something wrong but I figured with 90 days I could clean up my act. I drank for 89 more days, sobered up one sleepless night, had blood drawn the next day.

Getting the blood results was one of the worst moments of my life. My ALT and AST levels were very similar to yours. Both were right around 200. I’ll never forget the diagnosis on the paperwork: acute hepatitis. It was so strange to see it printed on paper with my name on it. My alcoholism had become data.

I’ll cut to the chase. I swore off alcohol for the rest of my life. It was like angels had opened up the sky and told me it was my time to stop drinking.

I drank 7 days later and every night after for a year.

I quit one year after receiving my blood results. The words “alcoholic hepatitis” went through my head probably a dozen times a day. What further damage had I done? Why was I still drinking? Was I crazy? Was I just going to drink myself to death? I stopped drinking when I was so hungover every day that I could no longer function in any capacity except barely getting through work.

So, I had been sober for 15 months when a pain started in my upper right abdomen, right where the gall bladder is. I worried day and night about it. My plan was to wait until I had been five years sober to even think of seeing a doctor again. One day the pain was getting to me too much so I went to an urgent care. I told them I believed I had gallstones. They suggested a CT scan. My heart sank. What were they going to see?

Final paragraph, I swear……

CT scan showed a healthy liver. Normal size, no scarring. My bloodwork was clean with enzymes within normal range. This was in a different state with a different health plan who had no prior records of me. I never mentioned anything about any prior diagnoses to this doctor or my prior bloodwork. I never mentioned the word “liver” but I did say that I do not drink any alcohol. I wanted them to take a close look at my organs and tell me what they saw. I even asked her how close it looked to someone “who is the picture of health” and she said “really, no different.”

My body had healed. I was 32 when I stopped drinking and 33 when they did the CT Scan. I had done considerable damage at a young age but bounced back.

I did nothing spectacular for my health during sobriety. In fact I ate high fat, high calorie foods, drank cocacola classic every day, tons of white sugars and carbs, took multivitamin every day, drank lots of water. That's it. All my liver needed was to stop drinking alcohol.

All I can say is that your time with alcohol is done. Right now. Done. The good news is that there’s a real possibility for healing when you stop.