My bloated belly continues to give Cake vibes (if you haven't read the last post, none of this is going to make sense) but has failed to exhibit much more than a crumb of evidence of its genuine cake-ness.
Rather then flogging the analogy to death, here is what I know:
I have ongoing ascities - fluid filling up in my abdominal cavity and giving me a lovely rotund tummy (think Vector, from Despicable Me).
I drain the fluid off myself every other day by attaching a bag to a tube that is dug into my side. Around 2 litres of what's know as "straw-coloured fluid" (how many people these days have ever even seen straw?) comes out and I throw the bag in the bin. The tube is only about 15cm long and rolls up under a little dressing, so it is not very obvious.
I have been doing this now for 8 months.
Everyone assumed the fluid was coming from cancer, but now it seems it might be a result of my liver packing it in after years of surgeries/radioactive attacks/chemotherapy and the odd bottle of cava.
I had a liver biopsy which confirmed that I have portal hypertension and liver fibrosis, also known as the early stages of cirrhosis.
I have some of the complications of cirrhosis already (besides the Vector-gut) - my protein levels are low (all right Instagram, yes, I should bave been listening to you all along) and I am losing muscle mass, so I am scrawny around my neck and my upper body. I get bad muscle cramps, in my feet, calves, thighs, fingers, which means that I am sometimes locked in painful twists that I cannot undo. I am breathless because some fluid has built up at the lower part of my lung, over my liver, so I wheeze and cough if I try to speak and go upstairs at the same time.
My belly hurts if I stand up for too long, and my scar tissue gets stretched by the fluid, meaning I am generally clutching one bit of me or another to try to massage the pain away.
I don't have to take chemotherapy any more for the moment, because no one can find any decent bit of cancer for it to zap.
I have started to take blood pressure tablets to see if the pressure in my liver will come down, but they don't seem to be making much difference so far.
I have entered a new world of outpatients waiting rooms and multidisciplinary teams, which are focussed on dodgy livers rather than cancer, and I am interested to see how the vibe (and stigma) differs.
There is an assumption that not having visible cancer is a good thing, so I will go along with that.
