Capedrifter

I try to remind myself every couple of days: Don’t forget to keep the houseplants alive.  As I’ve passed through these four years of ever worseningliver illness with my wife, I’ve stumbled across issues that I’ve come to recognize as warning signs of DANGER AHEAD.  They are identified, avoided, or confronted in a di

What’s Friendship Got To Do With It

Funny, isn’t it, how love can be a “second hand emotion”.

Friendship need not be physical

“It’s a rough road you’re on!” the ER doctor told us.  Momma Cape kept waiting.  The hours slowly ticked by all throughthe day on Wednesday, May 18, 2011.  Early in the day she spent most of the time in the bathroom groaning over the intense discomfort from days of constipation. 

We live by the ocean.  During our last visit to the Emergency Room I was reminded of, what is believed is a popular saying with a nautical derivation from the 19th Century, "know the ropes".  I knew not one thing about liver disease when a Boniva pill caused a full-blown eruption of Hepatitis B four years ago this June.  Our

Just as the technician on the parenthesis team said on a recent phone call the doctor that heads up the Radiology Department came to the drain room to review future options for Momma Cape.  His recommendation was TIPS.  We discussed the down side of the procedure and moved on to a discussion of a drain bag.  I explained t

Ascites is the first seven-lettered word to join that infamous lexicon of four letter words that make up my dirty word list.   I abandoned my mancave thispast week to stay upstairs with my bride.  Momma Cape heads to the hospital tomorrow for her sixth drainpipe.  We set records and broke patterns in this calendar se

In part, these thoughts were prompted by the new member mowald and her query about death.  I have spent three and a half years in furious pursuit of an educationon all aspects of liver disease.  Motivated by the absence of information from the three wisemen, the gastro, cardio and PC doc, I took to the digital library, made digital friends

I could only try to discourage my bride from making an all day trip to shop at her favorite ethnic markets, one Japanese and the other Chinese.  After her lastparacentesis she put on a pound of fluid a day.  In thirteen days she had accumulated over seven liters or a couple of gallons of protein-rich liquid in her abdomen. 

This post by TzuWho2 got me to reexamine the past three and a half years of fighting this illness: “How important is it to know these numbers? Isn't this only important when you get to the point of needing a transplant-same as knowing what stage you are in? Sorry but things like this puzzle me that maybe, just maybe, we get lost