Um, probably not cake then?

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.