Liver failure: can happen out of the blue
62 year old man, beautiful house in the country, pretty and sweet wife. Wine bottles everywhere, the man had a swollen and tight belly, his legs like tree trunks with pitting edema, his skin dark yellow, whites of his eyes yellow. Liver failure makes the body look monstrous, like something out of a horror film. Out of the blue this man started getting sick. He'd already lost his job and had multiple problems piling up, one after the other. Now he was having trouble getting off the couch, was nauseous all the time and couldn't keep food down. His wife was anxious, had a look like a deer in the headlights, there wasn't enough time to catch up emotionally to what was happening. It seemed one moment they were having parties with wine flowing, music, golf course events, concerts and good times...and suddenly she is buying diapers, asking for a walker, trying to figure out how to take care of him. In a frantic attempt to fix things, he quit drinking three weeks before. He quit drinking too late. He died a week later.