Chronic Alcoholism & Hepatitis C

I have a 44 yr old dtr..She is both of the above..She does not take care of herself. No meds for her condition. She said she could not take them because of the way they made her feel.  She has been and alcoholic since early 20's.  She was told she had Hepatitis C last year.  My question is how long is the life expectancy of someone with these two conditions, who does not take care of herself.  I feel that I am going to lose a daughter before too long.  Someone tell me I am wrong. Thanks and God Bless.

[Alady1620]

She needs to quit drinking alcohol to increase her life expectancy.  Drinking with hepc is like pouring gasoline on a fire.  It is awful for the liver.

As to how long she can keep up her current lifestyle, that is unknown.  All people are different.

She needs to get educated about hep c.  Maybe that will make her think long and hard before she pours that next alcoholic drink.  There are lots of materials available through the American Liver Foundation.  There are also support groups.

http://www.liverfoundation.org/

[spcecst2]

Your not wrong!! I bet she's not stupid, so I don't think the problem is getting her to understand the risk of drinking with hep c, I think you should find the underlying reason for not caring about herself, darn I'm sounding like Dr Phil and I can't stand that guy! I know several people who drank them selves to the grave early and they never wanted to hear about the risk, but thats the way most people tried to help!! You get to a point with that approach were you just want to knock the sh&t out of them!! They have to want to live for some thing!!

[Trish77]

My heart breaks to read your post. I have three young adult children. If I could sit with you, mother to mother over a cup of coffee while I respond to you in a gentle yet very honest way that is what I would do.  

You said "My question is how long is the life expectancy of someone with these two conditions, who does not take care of herself. "  And the only real answer anyone here can give is "shorter" and I would say "much shorter".  Your actual answer will come from a medical doctor or .. perhaps from someone here who has been, or knows someone who has been, in the same position.  While you say "someone tell me I am wrong" nobody can tell you that you are right or wrong except for a doctor.  If you didn't want the truth, you wouldn't ask the question, you would simply adopt the truth you wish to believe.  You already know that your daughter is in a perilous situation.  You want to know HOW perilous.  You want hope and you want the truth.  Good on you for having the courage to ask tough questions that have answers you may not want to hear, which is very hard when it is your own child.  

What is known is that the damage from Hepatitis C on it's own generally progresses very slowly. Many of us here have had it for 20 years or so and didn't know we had it that whole time and are only now discovering it and treating it...AND curing it, in the cases of a number of people here. It isn't the Hepatitis C that will shorten her life as much as the alcoholism on it's own and/or combined with it.  The one is potent to the other.  The worst thing a Hep C person can do is drink alcohol and even worse, abuse alcohol.  Not pulling any punches here.  It will deteriorate her liver faster than anything else she's doing.  And likely she knows this too...and it isn't that the effects of the treatment that is the reason she can't treat..it's that she'll have to stop drinking and she knows it. If you think you can..ask her that point blank.  And if she's on the level and doesn't want to treat right now and wants to wait for better drugs, she needs to stop drinking to take care of her liver while she waits. It all comes back to the drinking.

If you want to know what her life expectancy is, she will need to get a liver biopsy done to determine how much damage has already been done to her liver.  Then you will have a clearer picture.  

Was a biopsy done when she was diagnosed for HCV?  If yes, ask her the results if you don't know.

If she has been an alcoholic for 20 years now, she.. and you .. have a difficult battle.  In getting ready to start treatment for my own HCV, I've been changing my diet to lower the fat intake, trying to lower my salt intake and making sure I'm physically active and trying to lower my body weight/fat and.. I drink NO alcohol anymore, to give myself the best shot possible and I didn't drink much to begin with.  In your daughter's case...it's a no-brainer that she will need to address her alcoholism. Although...that has always been the case for your daughter, hasn't it, and I'm sorry that this is her situation...and yours. It is particularly critical that she address her alcoholism now that she knows that she has HCV.  And I know that is very much easier said than done and that is an extreme understatement alot of the time.

Information is power.  Whether that is the power to help your daughter or to help yourself or both...it's still power as it helps you determine what you can do and how to change things.. and what you cannot do and work towards accepting those things and making peace with them.  

Keep asking for information and I wish you the strength to deal with it and the wisdom to know how you can best support and help your daughter.  I hope you have professional supports for yourself to help you with this.  All you can do, all ANY of us can do .. is take it one step at a time, one day at a time.

[mremeet]

I've known a few people who have gotten to your daughter's age and have been alcoholics for many years. These are the toughest problems to solve, and sometimes they are never solvable. But one thing you may want to consider is to make sure that her alcoholism is not being enabled by those that love her most. I know a sweet girl I love to death who's in her late 30's and is an alcoholic. She is surrounded with loving friends and family members. They've struggled to get her to stop drinking for several years now. They even had a family intervention when she was confronted about her drinking and was basically forced into going to rehab. She reluctantly went and stayed there for a month. She emerged alcohol free (for that month), but picked up the habit of smoking from other rehab people. A few weeks later she started drinking again, except this time now she smoked too. The rehab was an expensive and abject failure.

After watching what has happened to her over the years, I've become convinced the number one thing that is keeping her in her state of alcoholism is that the people around her are enabling her (without them realizing it). They shield her from failure and they shield her from falling down. She still has her job (as a school teacher), so she uses that as a way to internally rationalize that her drinking is not a problem. Her husband takes care of getting the bills paid, keeping the house in order, getting the groceries, keeping her company and generally setting the stage of comfortable normalcy for her. This enables her, it allows her to continue what she's doing and it allows her to rationalize in her own mind that things are not that bad. She still has her job, she still has her house, she still has her husband. If her husband were to leave her (which he has threatened to do, but hasn't), her life would crumble very quickly. She wouldn't be able to drive to get groceries (including booze), at least without getting in an accident or by getting a DWI. She wouldn't be able to responsibly take care of her bills - debts, defaults and foreclosure notices would start piling up quickly. Her house would fall into disrepair, the few friends she has left would no longer visit her because the "normal" person (her husband) would not be there anymore. She's just a babbling drunk all by herself, not someone you'd be interested in visiting or socializing with. And in all likelihood after living like this for awhile, she would lose her job. Probably because either she would lose her driver's license or because her vehicle would be damaged/destroyed or simply fall into disrepair. She's already on the rocks with her job because she hasn't been keeping up on her certifications, so it won't take much.

Anyway, for my friend that I love dearly, if the support system were pulled out from under her, she would fall flat on her face very quickly. There is the risk she could be injured or could even die (by car crash, accidentally setting the house on fire etc) by being left on her own - but one thing's for sure she's dying right now living in the cozy, enabling environment that her loving husband has created and sustains for her. I strongly believe that she needs the rug pulled out from under her before it's too late. She needs to get a DWI, she needs to wreck her car, she needs to lose her job, she needs to lose her husband. If she doesn't lose these things and isn't confronted with the awful reality of her situation she will most certainly die of alcoholism sooner rather than later.

I don't know what the situation is for your daughter, but if you're the loving mother who's taking care of your little girl, you might have to make similar decisions - tough love and all that. If things are that bad and she's been entrenched in alcoholism for decades, it's time to pull out all the stops before it's too late. There are definite risks in doing so, but depending on the specifics of her situation there might be greater risks in not doing so.

[jmjm530]

Alcoholism and Hep C is a bad combination and can accelerate liver damage. Easier said than done, she has first to stop drinking -- AA, or whatever. Meanwhile get her to a liver specialist (hepatologist) so they can keep track of her liver damage.

-- Jim

[gagal40]

My dtr  has been in and out of rehabs her whole life; she knows what to do but can't or won't.
She has a new grandtr...you would think that would be something for her to live for.  She has been living in the woods in a tent, can't hold down a job for drinking.  How can she go any lower than this?
I live in one state and she lives in another...I did the  TOUGH LOVE THING a long time ago.  I have the Lord in my life....he is my strength.  I pass this all on to her, but nothing seems to wake her up.  Her Father died at 54 yrs of age from alcoholism.  Myself, deep down, don't think she will ever quit drinking.  I pray that she will and pray often for the God to care for her and help her.  I've done my best for her.  The rest has to be up to her. Thanks for all of you good replies, and, God Bless  you all.

[jmjm530]

It seems you've done all you can do. Sometimes it's just in others hands. Hopefully, God will care for and help her find the way. Is it possible to drag her into a liver specialist's office once or twice to at least get her evaluated? Sometimes people listen better if you're wearing a white coat.

-- Jim

[GoofyDad]

Why does this conjur an image of you, Jenna, a rant, and a tennis racket??  ;-)

[mayday557]

Very sorry to read about the situation that you and your daughter are in.  
I had wacky liver enzyms at 28...kept drinking untill I was 31, then abstained
from booze untill my mid forties....untill I went to mexico and fell off the wagon
'cuz tequilla --- what can I say.

Hopefully she'll start feeling crappy enuf to do something about it, IE: AA
treatment, then deal with the 'C'.  Nothing will happen untill she makes the
decision (receiving a moment of clarity).  I'll offer up a prayer both for you and
your daughter.  It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings...and quite frankly I cannot
carry a tune.

[gagal40]

thanks so much for you alls input to my problem...All comments are most appreciated.

[Trish77]

If your daughter has a grandchild, then she also has a child. From the numbers you give, she was alcoholic before and as a mom. It was not my demon, so I have NO idea what it's like to kick it.   If none of that is enough to motivate her to kick it, then I don't know what is.  If she has any will at all to live, then, as Jim said, getting her in for a liver specialist to determine a prognosis may be enough of a reality jolt. I hope so.  

Trish

[Forseegood]

Trish and Mremeet, your posts were really great and inspiring. So much great info, and I hope gagal has culled some great information to help with her daughter.

Just got one issue with what Mremeet said about rehabs being "failures" if the alcoholic doesn't leave the rehab and *stay* sober.

It's almost like meditating, it's all in the trying sometimes, not in the getting necessarily. Not right off the bat at least.

The same goes for AA meetings. There are many alcoholics who go to a meeting, hate it (that, usually having more do to with the fact they are just not "ready" to get sober at that particular junction of their life - more then anything else).

They might think and/or secretly hope, that they have a few more years of drinking in them. I'll do that "someday."

So another job is left, another relationship sunk, or some nasty medical diagnosis related to alcohol ensues. Hopefully, they don't end up in some horrible alcohol related car accident, a big reason why many people go to AA or rehab.

Many times, most of these reasons at the same time will finally bring an alcoholic to rehab or a meeting. Maybe this time they go to many more meetings, till they have enough of all of that....and back to the drinking again. Like Mystereet says, depends on how many people are enabling them sometimes.

Everyone has their own "bottom"....this, like so many things, is all over the place, with no rhyme or reason to dictate it. I talked to a woman who lived on skid row for years, giving out sexual favors for drinks or a sandwich. She said she lived in parks or pretty much anywhere. She related she was probably raped so often she had no idea how many times.

She went to rehab 7 times. Hundreds of AA meetings, with a lot of drinking and drugging in between them. She finally did get sober on her last rehab stay, she'd been sober for 12 years when I met her....owned her own business, got married, had a family, beautiful house, the whole American Dream.

If any of you would of met this very attractive woman, you would have never pegged her for a person having this past life. There are many people like this.

And then there are people who maybe just get fired, or lose a relationship...or are never able to get or stay in a relationship.....whatever.....and figure, wow, I got an alcohol problem  - and they stop drinking on their own, without any help from anybody else. Sometimes, a Hep C diagnosis just does it. Whatever.

Or, they can get sober on their first AA meeting, and stay that way. Every alcoholic is on their own path. There are even some people who find out they weren't really an alcoholic in the first place, and they go back to drinking moderately again.

Admittedly and sadly, some people don't have any discernible bottom at all, and they never get sober....till it's far too late for them. Not every alcoholic gets sober, that's the sad truth.

But there are many that do. Rehabs, AA meetings, and other types of programs....are only there to help and guide and support. But it's up to the person themselves when and if, they get sober or not.

As far as rehabs, sometimes an alcoholic is so bad off that a meeting just won't do for them, so they go to a rehab to be off the streets, and be put in a whole *other* world. A world of "learning" to get sober, with none of the distractions of the "outside." That's the purpose of rehabs. It might take one time, or 5 times....hopefully.... it'll stick at some point. And that's all that any of us can hope for for a chronic alcoholic. Just my take.

[Forseegood]

I also wanted to say that they have medical therapies that work for very many people...don't know if you have cable, but I'm sure if you go to the HBO site they will have some information on a series they called "Addiction" and you can find out more about this there...Alcoholism is a disease (or a syndrome for some people) with many components, and I hope your daughter gets the light soon, she has an uphill battle.... but there are people worse off (like my younger sister I'm sure) who have gotten sober finally... so don't lose hope, hope is the one thing that we can always have. My best to you.