Health Update

So this is Becca's health update 300 or so. I've lost count.

First of all, I'll start off with a little background of my fabulous liver disease. PSC (Primary Schlerosing Cholangitis) has eaten through two of my livers so far and is eating through the one inside me as I type. What PSC does is kill bile ducts. Once said bile ducts are deceased, they leave scar tissue (this is called cirrhosis, or "hardening"). When the bile has limited placed to go it flows into the blood stream instead. This causes the person's skin to become yellow and is called jaundice. It also shows itself as increased bilirubin on blood tests. Normal bilirubin would be 0-2.
No one can predict how fast or slow PSC will progress or if it will even stop completely. If it continues to progress, it will eventually kill most of the bile ducts and liver will be mostly scar tissue, i.e. cirrhosis will take over. Then this person will need to receive a liver transplant in order to survive.

I've seen my old livers (they peacefully reside in a tissue archive in Minnesota) and boy are they hard and green. Right now, I feel as if my liver is hard as a rock, so the results of my biopsy that say my liver shows further cirrhosis are no surprise to me.

If you've seen me lately, you'll know that I have a yellow tinge to my skin. My bilirubin is 5.5. My liver doctor in Omaha has ordered a cholangiogram for this Friday. This is a test where a catheter is inserted into the artery in your thigh and moved up to the liver where bile ducts are injected with dye to detect any strictures. If there are strictures they sometimes need to put in a stent (a tube that opens up the bile duct and runs outside of the body). I've had both cholangiograms and stents in the past.

If there are strictures in my bile ducts it would certainly account for my liver pain. It would also explain the bilirubin/jaundice thing. If everything looks fine, then we don't know what's causing the pain and the fact still remains that my liver is deteriorating.

Other symptoms of mine include chills, low temperature, very low appetite, low blood pressure, extreme fatigue, some difficulty breathing, and of course, constant liver pain. Still, I'm able to take pretty low doses of pain meds and do a few things like sweep my room or make myself a snack everyday. I have a feeling, though, that after my procedure I'll be completely bedridden again. I've ordered lots of origami crafts off the internet to keep me occupied.

So what's the doctor's guess on how this all started? He thinks that perhaps the birth control I'm on for ovarian cysts and the high volume of antibiotics I was on during the winter may have jump started some of the liver problems. I'm not on antibiotics right now, so that's not a problem. My birth control has now been stopped.

I saw my gynecologist today and had an ultrasound to check on the cysts. When I was first diagnosed in the emergency room the right ovary had a cyst of 5 centimeters and the left was about 3 centimeters. Now, after almost 3 months of birth control, they have done the opposite of what we thought they would: they grew. The right cyst is now 7 centimeters and the left is 5 centimeters. I'm going to have to have surgery to remove the cysts and patch up any endometriosis and then go on some heavy-duty drug/hormone therapy to shut down my ovaries so they're not naughty anymore. My gynecologist is going to talk to my liver doctor about when we should do this and how to go about it since the procedure is so close to my colon and we want to prevent any further injury to it.

I think that's pretty much it for now. I'll try and keep everyone updated on what happens Friday. Thank you all for your help and concern!