TheLiverDoc™@theliverdoc
If you want to quit alcohol and go sober, you only have to sit in my outpatient for a day and see stories unfolding.
Today a 48 year old patient of mine with unstable complications from advanced alcohol-related cirrhosis brought his 7 year old daughter to introduce me.
He did not have much time left because it was not just the cirrhosis, but also the liver cancer that's consuming him. There was no curative option because the cancer was far too advanced. He was on palliation because I referred him to a group for home-care to help him save money. Death inside a hospital is an expensive business these days.
He had decided early on during my end of life care counselling sessions that he did not want the ventilator.
I thought I'd never see him again.
He came in today because palliative care services at his place advised him albumin infusions to reduce severe muscle cramps. He could have gotten it done at a nearby clinic or hospital.
But he travelled all the way to my OPD along with his wife and little daughter (whom I was meeting for the first time).
He wanted to show her the doctor who was "going to save him."
The truth was, he knew he would be unable to see me after a few weeks, maybe a month at best. He was going to get an infection, suffer a bleed or go into a liver coma. This was written.
He quit alcohol, but only after his cancer diagnosis. It was too late. He was going to die.
But before that happened, he had come to see me with his whole family. Well just the three of them, and a neighbor who drove them in his car instead of him taking the train or a bus like before. He was too sick to travel like that now.
I held the little girl's hand, smiled at her, patted her head, looked at the wife, and wished them the best, as I prescribed albumin infusion in the day care for my patient whom I would never see again. I can't explain how it felt.
I won't forget the girl's face. And I don't think she will, mine, because she would remember me as the one who was supposed to save her father, but alcohol won.