Posted on 09/25/2023 8:53:59 PM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
We all have sad stories to tell occasionally and I have one.
I have a friend I known for well over 40 years and she has always been fun to be around and we have stayed in touch all this time on and off.
Until about a year ago I had no idea she was a committed, hard core, alcoholic. The last two years she had been talking about a decline in her health. She had taken the Covid vaccines and at least one booster and I was fearful this caused her to have some adverse effects.
But the surprise was a year ago when she saw another doctor she had been sent to because her PCP thought she needed to have her Gall Bladder out. In my opinion her PCP is incompetent for not being able to diagnose the fact she had Liver Cancer. The surgeon she saw looked at her test file and saw right away she Stage 4 Liver Cancer and that she needed to get treatment.
It was then she admitted she was a alcoholic to me. Now she had told a few years earlier she had a substance abuse problem and had been addicted to Benadryl and I now think she was drinking during that addiction also.
So she gets help and starts seeing doctors that hopefully can help her. She claimed she had seen the error of her ways and was committed to getting better and hopefully would be able to get on a Liver transplant list.
The thing was she never got any better, in fact she got worse. She could not put any weight on and is now skin and bones at 87 pounds. She claims she has a blood clot on her pancreas and just recently was diagnosed with two ulcer’s and the lining of her stomach has been destroyed by Alcohol abuse.
You see she never quit drinking, even with all she was told she could not do it. Three weeks ago she was in a auto accident, she hit someone from behind and fortunately no one was hurt and only her car had damage.
But the state police were involved because the accident happened on the Interstate. She claimed they did not have a field sobriety test kit, then she refused to take a blood test. Finally she was arrested and compelled to give a urine sample, results of which I don’t know yet.
I have caught her in several lies about the drinking, long story short ,she just never gave up alcohol. She is married and evidently her husband finally found out about it and her attitude was I will go get help at AA.
Sadly I believe we are well past any help from AA or anyone else. I feel she is too far gone and I have no doubt she will go back to drinking, presuming she quits at all.
On top of this I find out she is on Tramadol which is Opiate pain killer. The only reason I can think of for her to be on that is that her body is shutting down slowly and the pain will only get worse.
I frankly can’t see her being able to last for very long in this situation. I give her maybe 6 months, but that may be way too generous. No one knows how these things will go until they happen.
Wow, what a great success story. God bless you all.
Sad story
She is very very sick
At this point permanent brain damage is likely
absolutely true
What I have seen in alcoholics including the ones I am dealing with right now is that they are incredibly weak people, the weakest imaginable, child-like impulse self-gratification.
___________
And they LIE.
Spouse hid alcohol abuse and spend down savings.
We almost ended up on streets.
The good people of FR helped me through that rough time.
AA is waiting for you right now.
Call
Most of the hard core alcoholics I’ve known drank vodka, which really takes a toll on the body. It’s the devil’s drink.
Tell your friend you love her but you have to step back until decides to get sober. At that point you can step back in to offer support.
.
Wrong.
You can hide alcohol addiction
People hide it all the time. Spouses lie and bathe and shave and stay away. The odor becomes normal for kids and adults.
I have had people tell me that the only way they realized that their beloved was drinking is when a non drunk peer came over and they could finally see the difference.
Alcoholics need to be detoxed.
Not stop cold
it is painful
30% of severe alcoholics who are not detoxed die without alcohol when cold turkey
That doesn’t happen in any other substance
I agree with you on ALANON. At first it seemed silly to me but the program changed my life. It put the focus back on me and not the Alcoholic (s) as in dysfunctional family. Many alcoholics. It is quite amazing how others that have been through this nightmare can help you.
Bilirubin is the result of a breakdown of red blood cells
Liver is involved in it.
Dang. I’m sure it’s the same thing for my friends wife.
You dont at all sound like a real alcoholic. You think that cocaine addiction is the same as alcohol addiction. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions...but dude, you shouldn’t talk about something that you have no personal experience with especially alcohol addiction. And by personal I dont mean a brother or a parent or fillintheblank other person.
Oh, he’s not been blind to it. Him and his kids tried convincing her for many years. Their oldest recently got married and they bought a breathalyzer and said the only way she would be allowed to come is if she blew clean.
They’ve been beating their heads against her alcoholic wall. Sad all around.
My opinion is with her health situation it’s too late for her to recover, she needs a liver transplant but she will never get one and at Stage 4 Liver cancer I think her time is limited.
Even with liver cancer she can still stop drinking. It’s tragic what alcoholics do to themselves and their family and friends.
Evidently she doesn’t really want to. She was given all this news and information a year ago, told me she was going to work hard to get better so she could get on a transplant list. But she never really quit drinking totally and has continued to wreck her health. Her Body Mass Index is about 12, has to be 17 at a minimum for a transplant and you have to be totally alcohol and drug free for 6 months before you can even be considered to put on a transplant list. That is just not going to happen.
I am not an alcoholic. I have never had a drink other than a couple of times at communion where I got trapped and I just moistened my lips. I always select non-alcoholic. My point is the first time you take a drink you expose yourself. You are correct, I don’t have any worthwhile advice for someone who has had that first drink.
But I have very worthwhile advice for someone who hasn’t. Don’t. Absolutely nothing good comes from it. Nothing. Disagree?
I was going about 10 years ago then I moved to an area that’s pretty remote. The nearest one is an hour away but it’s worth it, I’m going to do it and drive there. Thanks
Thanks I’ll try it. This thread is something I will also be printing out, so many Freepers know people that died from drinking which scares the hell out of me. I can’t even imagine the horror of being told by a doctor “You need a liver transplant or you will die”
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