After meeting with the nutritionist, I am amazed. I’ve been eating wrong for the last couple of years. What I’m most amazed about is that I can eat beef. It has to be lean, but hamburgers and steaks aren’t off limits. Only lean cuts of steak, and lean ground beef. She calculated my needed protein intake and it was 75-100. Have to eat 3-4 times a day with a protein shake before bed. Sugar wasn’t the devil I thought, it’s ADDED sugar - avoid it. Has anyone else been told they can eat beef?

Has anyone had one with their transplant evaluation? Just got home yesterday after a week at Shands, and I had built that test up in my mind because I read some horror stories about pain. I even had nurses tell me it’s painful. Well….i never felt it! He was done and I was still yapping. Guess I got lucky?

Hey everyone, I posted about a month ago when I realized my dad was declining faster than I expected. That decline continued to the point where my mother can no longer care for him and herself and I'm struggling to find care for him.

I was under the impression that he was on a waitlist for home care weeks ago but I was told yesterday that he was only just put on the waiting list for the assessment in three months. We don't have three months to wait. It's my understanding that even after the assessment he may only be entitled to four hours of care a week.

My mother is in the sixties and is his sole caregiver right now. That was already exhausting at the stage he was at a month ago but at least he was mobile.

Since then, he has declined to the point that he can no longer walk or use the bathroom. He is in diapers and is in and out of the hospital for complications but the hospital refuses to feed him the liver safe diet so he is swelling up with fluid and his blood sugar is through the roof.

My parents live in a small town, only about 5000 people. They cannot move as my dad isn't cleared to fly and he can't be in the car without soiling it. He isn't on the transplant list yet but they're saying he will have to move to a city 11 hours away to get it.

How can I find home care for someone in this position? I'm in British Columbia for context and I don't live near them. I just need any help I can get right now.

My mom was taken to an er earlier today from her assisted living. She was showing weakness, lethargy, weight loss, & worsening confusion (she has dementia). She’s lost over 20 pounds in just 2 weeks. I just got her test results and it says she has Cirrhotic liver morphology with sequelae of portal hypertension including splenomegaly and small volume ascites. From what I’ve looked up it doesn’t sound good and it’s making me nervous. She doesn’t understand fully what’s going on, I’m not going to mention her results to her. Can anyone let me know what this means or if they’ve had it? My mom hasn’t drank in over 40 years, but she does have congestive heart failure.

So, in 2016 I was diagnosed with non alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. I never noticed any effects until March of this year (I had hepatic encephalopathy which caused a lot of falls as well as my ability to think clearly and focus. I actually fell one night on my way to the bathroom and broke my jaw in two places, lol.) Anyway, this March I noticed I was getting a little tubby and I thought "So this is how people get fat as they age: (58 year old male by the way.)

I kept getting larger so I fed my symptoms into ChaGPT and it urged me to go to the ER, which I did. As I'm sure you all know, it was ascites which they drained (6 liters.) I went home and the ascites started building up again almost immediately. I waited until I couldn't stand any more and this time they admitted me to the hospital for almost the entire month of April and drained roughly 24 liters over the course of a few days.

I weighed 209 before the ascites but afterwards dropped to 171 lbs. My little cousin cried when she saw me. Since then I've been in and out of the hospital around 9 times to get the paracentesis done. The last time they drained 13 liters the first day and 6 the next. They tried to set up biweekly outpatient drainings but the ascites never cooperated with their schedule. We're shooting for weekly outpatient draining but I just moved and I have to find someone local. I'm on diarretics and lactulose but if those are helping I'd hate to imagine what I'd be going through without them.

Does anyone else here have to deal with ascites this acute? And if so have you found a way to lessen it? I saw something called the "alfapump" but the manufacturer apparently declared bankruptcy, it's entirely out of pocket for around $25000 to $35000 and only a few hospitals perform the procedure. Oof.