Lill’s Little Liver Ills

Note- I wrote this in the spring of 2009. For an update, read my post, I Am Not A Lily-Livered Pontoon  from July of 2010 and, trust me, my liver and I are fine now.

Well, I hardly know where to begin. I guess it all started last winter when I developed some weird symptoms. I called it the “Marvin the Paranoid Android” syndrome, because it was a vague ache that seemed to come and go for no reason, at the bottom of my rib cage on the right side. Marvin’s pain was in his diodes all down his left side, but still. It seemed to taunt me, showing up for a few days until I’d decide to make an appointment with the doctor if it wasn’t gone the next day – and it was. Gone the next day, that is.

Things went on like that until my Spring checkup when I went in to see how much winter weight I’ve packed on this year and how my wonky thyroid is holding out with daily applications of Armour Thyroid pills. Doc G, a good man with the patience of a saint, suggested I have some blood tests, just to make sure the mysterious pain wasn’t anything we should be concerned with.

Of course, at the time, the pain had vanished entirely, so I forgot all about it and about the tests until I got a call from Mona, Doc G’s receptionist.

“Your tests were fine,” she said, which was no less than I had expected.

“Except that your TSH level is a little low, so maybe you should ramp back on the Armour a little.”

I told her I could cut it back from 120 mg to 90 mg and she said that’s what Doc G had written as a suggestion. I was about to thank her and hang up when she said, “Oh, there is one thing, one of your liver enzymes is a little high.”

With a pang of regret about that second glass of Shiraz I’d had with a friend a few days earlier, I nervously asked her what we needed to do about that.

“Oh,” she assured me, “It’s nothing serious, I’m sure. Probably just a fluke (egad, a liver fluke?) but it could possibly be an early sign of gallbladder disease. He’d like you to have an ultrasound just to be on the safe side.”

So I did. A week later, Mona called me again and gave me the good news: no sign of gallbladder disease whatsoever.

“Well, thank you,” I said, “That’s taken a weight off my mind.”

“Yup,” Mona went on, “Just fatty liver, but no gallbladder disease.”

Now, I’m sure Mona is a great receptionist, but when it comes to delivering news to patients over the phone, she’s on a par with – but nowhere near as funny as – the late Gracie Allen. I made an appointment to see Doc G and immediately swore off liquor, fatty foods and – for good measure – butter beans. (I hate them and they look like they have fat in them.)

Doc G took yet more blood, grilled me like Elliott Ness and managed to winkle out the fact that my grandmother had died from liver disease – cirrhosis of all things, which is odd because she was a teetotaler. I had forgotten that fact until I mentioned my liver problems to my oldest aunt, who then mentioned my grandmother’s liver disease which carried her off when she was only 5 years older than I am now.

I won’t bore you with a description of the tests and procedures that followed. Suffice it to say that I seem to have inherited my grandmother’s genes, although not her abstemiousness. Would that I had been a teetotaler and a vegan who spent her life living on raw brown rice and organic nettles. Instead, I swallowed (literally) the frequently touted belief that red wine is the perfect antidote to the fat in that Bugaboo Creek steak and garlic fries I noshed down a couple of times a week.

However, before I put David Crosby on my speed dial so I can ask him where he got his shiny new liver back in ’95, I’m embarking on a crusade to save whatever is left of my own personal “whole-house” filtration system. I’m a researcher, for chrissakes. I’ve investigated everything from helminth therapy, to using banana skins to remove warts (it works!), to using soil bacteria to treat Depression.

In the last month, I’ve already radically changed the way I eat and drink. I’ve lost ten pounds and my blood pressure is slowly sinking downward. My shopping list looks like it was written by a Seventh Day Adventist who’s having a bunch of Hindu ascetics over for Lent.

My plan is to give it hell all summer and then have my enzyme levels checked in the fall. If they’re better, I’ll raise a glass of barley water and toast my researching ability. If they’re the same or worse, I’ll still probably be fine as long as I don’t eat or drink anything I really like. Apparently, livers are pretty good at working at diminished capacity as long as one doesn’t push them past their limits.

In closing, just a word to the wise. Before you hoist that next tankard of light beer, sip a mojito or chow down on that massive fried onion appetizer, you might want to make an appointment to get YOUR liver checked. I just read that Fatty Liver Disease is poised to be the next big epidemic. I’ve always been quick to find the Next Big Thing, but I really wish I wasn’t an early adopter on this one.