Bankrupt…

No, I am not talking about being financially bankrupt, I’m talking about health wise.  I have cirrhosis of the liver.  I am a 44 year old young lady (hehe) that has a diseased liver-WOW that was not what I was expecting to hear when the nurse called that day about a month ago. Ok, I’ll start at the beginning, but to do that I have to go back to the year 2001.

The year 2001:

I was on track to fulfilling my childhood dream of being a stay-at-home wife and mother of 2 children. I had been married to my best friend, Hershel, for 6 years, and we had 1 gorgeous and healthy 2 1/2 year old Megan Paige.  Getting pregnant with Megan was planned, and easy.  My pregnancy was also fairly easy, although I did have gestational diabetes and I thought that was the worst thing ever!  I had to prick my finger 4 times a day and watch everything that went into my mouth… ugh!  No fair right? A pregnant woman is supposed to be able to eat any and every thing she wants. I did follow the doctors orders to the T because I didn’t want to hurt my baby. The doctor had to induce 4 days after my due date, because Megan was so comfy, she didn’t want to leave her home.  God blessed me with an easy delivery, a childhood friend was my nurse and was a wonderful delivery nurse!  That was so special!

Let’s move on… with child number 2, I assumed things would go the same way… we planned to get pregnant when Megan was 2 years old, but this time things were not so easy.  I had to take fertility drugs to try and get pregnant.I ended up getting pregnant not long after starting the fd’s, but when we went to the doctor, there was no heartbeat.  Actually, in ultrasound, we saw that there was no heart.  I had to go once a week for about 6 or 8 weeks for an ultrasound, only to be heartbroken every time.  At week 12, Megan and I were at home when I miscarried.  I will not get into that process, but if you have miscarried all alone at home, you understand it is painful and devastating all at the same time.

Hershel and I were still trying to have another child.  I started going to a high risk OB/GYN and he did a lot of blood work to check all my levels. When the results came back, my liver functions showed that they were elevated in my blood work.  When I say elevated, the normal range was hundreds of points below my numbers. This was a huge shock to us because I was not a drinker and in my mind, only alcoholics had to worry about their livers.  I went to have my first liver biopsy… this biopsy showed that I had a disease called Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis  (NASH).  This is an autoimmune disease, where my body thought that my liver was a foreign object and decided to try to kill it…  At this time the biopsy showed I was in Stage 2. (There are 4 stages of liver disease. Stage 4 is cirrhosis, and the doctor always told me once you get to stage 4, there is no going back… nothing we can do.)  Funny tidbit about my first liver biopsy… I woke up during the middle of it, and the doctor had just pulled the sliver of liver out of my side and I told him it looked like hamburger meat… he agreed, then told the anesthetist to knock me back out…lol!

Ok, so back to trying to have the baby, to complete my childhood dream… I was using a doctor for high risk pregnancies… he told me that if I were to get pregnant with NASH, that I would not live to deliver the child.  So at that time, Hershel and I realized that God had different plans for our lives than we had.  So my little family was complete with one perfect healthy (spoiled rotten) daughter.

Back to the present:

I had a routine liver biopsy about 1 1/2 years ago, and at that time I was in Stage 3 of the liver disease.  There was a drug study for Stage 3 NASH that I was trying to get into.  I did not qualify because my diabetes was not under control, so I had to get that under control and try again.  About the end of the summer 2017, my diabetes was under control, so I tried to get into the drug study again.  To qualify for this study, I had to have several new tests run, including a new liver biopsy… no big deal, I just had one not long before and I wasn’t worried about the results being anything different.  About a week after the biopsy I called to get my results, and the nurse told me it would be a while before they would be ready, so I put it on the back burner.  Seriously, I didn’t even think about it again, until about a month ago.

I was laying down resting on a Friday afternoon and my phone rang, I looked at the caller ID and it was the liver research center, so, of course, I answered it.  The nurse told me that she had my biopsy results back and that I was no longer in Stage 3, but in Stage 4.  I was completely floored!  I was bankrupt health wise!  I was dying!  I was so caught off guard that I did not know what to say or ask.  She told me that I was in the beginning stage of cirrhosis… huh?  So there are 4 Stages in liver disease, and there are several stages of cirrhosis… I didn’t know that… remember, the doctor always told me that once I was in Stage 4, that was it…  The nurse also told me that the drug study I was trying to get in (remember the Stage 3 NASH study) had a clause in it that it would roll over to Stage 4, but that this particular study had started about a year before the others, and they were only taking patients for another 3 days.  Needless to say, when she asked me if I could be there on the next Wednesday, I said, “absolutely!”

WOW!  It hit me several days later that God had worked everything out!  The timing could not have been any more perfect!  Even though the results were not what I expected, He was not surprised!  Not only did we find out at the perfect time, but the drug study I was trying to get in had a roll over clause!  He made sure that even though I no longer qualified for the Stage 3 NASH study, there was a study that I did qualify for!

God knows everything that has happened to us, that is happening to us, and that will happen to us!  He does not cause any of it to happen, but He always works things out for His good!