And Then There Was More. #liverdiseasesucks (Part Two)

2017. Worst summer in BC history? Maybe. Fires were everywhere and the smoke was densely settled into Kamloops, grating on our nerves and bodies. My little guy was not doing well in it all and my husband, Garry, was working out in it at the Copper Mine. I just wanted some relief from worrying about keeping my family healthy, even inside the house. Smoke winter I started calling it. Like a depressive end of winter, stuck inside feeling, dark and suffocating.
Our vacation time came and we escaped to Vancouver where the air smelled like cedar and the wild ferns grow. All six of us wandered through Othello Tunnels on the way, explored the Vancouver Aquarium, and searched for treasures at Crescent Beach with Grandma. It was a huge relief to be out of the smoke.
Garry was not feeling great though and after we got home, just in time for the smoke to finally clear, he was not waking up for more than a few hours at a time. The bleeding had started again. He went into emerg at the hospital twice and was given a prescription antacid but was getting worse still with no one listening to him. He called me while I had taken my daughter's ninth birthday out- he was heading back to the hospital when I got home.
The terrifying started again. I joined him at the hospital. He was sort of out of it. He had lost too much blood. The doctors in emerg asked him so many questions and brought in two internal specialist doctors who were way too blunt with the results of an ultrasound that he had had before our holidays. The result: liver cirrhosis. But, he thought he didn't have liver cirrhosis- it was tested. (One biopsy didn't work, but one came back on a scale of 1.1- all good.) They assured him he did have it and he would have a barraging of tests. (They did not realize he had already had all these tests at the beginning of all of this.) After that Garry was rushed by ambulance to Kelowna, to the nearest gastroenterologist on call. They started him on a blood transfusion on the way. He received five units of blood and a unit of platelets. That part scares me. It is way too much.
He was diagnosed with Gastric Antral Vascular Ectasia or GAVE for short. A disease that causes blood vessels in the stomach to dilate and bleed. It is concurrent with cirrhosis of the liver. After that Garry has had to have a scope and cauterizing procedure done every six weeks to 2/3 months by his gastro specialist. He also had another blood transfusion in the Fall after throwing up a blood clot.
This is our new reality. Treating bleeds. A great thing about the human spirit is that if you experience something long enough, it becomes normal. And so, this is was our new norm.