desparate mom in law needs answer to acute fatty liver death

[nmourning]

I am desparate for answers in the death of my 27 year old daughter in law.  She was a white, 27 year old, with an eight year old son and a 14 month old daughter.  She had a history of alcohlic use as a teen and young adult but had drank no more than 5 times after abstaining during her pregnancy and birth of her infant.  On August 23rd she and my son had a few friends over and she had 4 to 5 vodka and cranberries.  Since she had not drank regularly in awhile or excessively she woke up the next day feeling very hung over.  She vomited several times and had a headache.  She tried to eat but could not hold anything down.  My son took care of the kids while she rested most of the day.  At 6:30 pm she told him she was going to try and get some sleep.  He let 30-to 40 minutes pass and then went in to check on her and make sure she was drinking atleast some fluids due to the earlier vomiting.  He found her face down next to the bed on her stomach.  When he rolled her over she was blue, not breathing, eyes open and no pulse.  He carried her into the living room because she collapsed between the bed and the wall in an area 3 to 4 foot feet wide and he needed to do cpr immediately.  He began cpr as he phoned paramedics.  Upon their arrival they took over and on the way to the hospital informed him that they had a faint pulse but that it was 'thready".  The doctors continued life saving efforts but could not stabilize her and pronounced her dead after an hour of work, including what he referred to as everything they could do.  The coroner's report came back as acute fatty liver and ethanol abuse with natural causes being the C.O.D.  We are furious and confused.  My son lived with this woman and knows for a fact that she had not abused alcohol in any shape or form in years.  My husband and I spent all summer there and never saw her drink, saw her impaired or smelled any alcohol or witnessed any alcohol intake EVER!  When packing the house we did not find any empty bottles or evidence of any alcohol use that may have been hidden from us.  As a 15 to 23 year old she drank no more or less than most, certainly she was no saint but she was not an alcoholic either.  We cannot wrap our mind around these findings please tell us how could what appears to have been a perfectly normal and healthy appropriate weight to height and no extraordinary diet isuues or substance issues human being just drop dead of an acute fatty liver with no symptoms or signs?

[nmourning]

I am so pleased and grateful that you took the time to share your very personal struggle with me.  I am both inspired by your survival and yet saddened by the bleak prognosis you have been given.  It truly does ease my pain to have heard from an actual patient who has been through such a terrifying ordeal and has the insight to give me the answers that I was searching for, at last.  I know there are many clinicians out there that are looking at everything from a statistical, medically gleened, diagnostic stand point that could offer some information but somehow hearing it first hand, the fact that this was not an alcoholics disease and that my daughter in law was more than a coroner's report, is comforting.  I needed to hear that people who are by all outward signs healthy, mostly abstinent and lead a lifestyle that is contradictory to the terminology of LIVER DISEASE, which evokes a certain sterotype in one's mind, can certainly meet the fate which ultimately was bestowed upon her.

I will pray for your good health and continued life everytime I think of my dear sweet girl, who left us far too soon.  You have done me a huge favor.  I have shared this information with her other loved ones, so that we may collectively stop second guessing everything and start healing.  We were very close to hiring someone to examine the coroner's findings because we could not understand how in the world it could be that she had a disease that could kill her so suddenly and never even know it.  Bless you and your family

, eternally grateful.....

[cat33]

So,So very sorry my prayers go out to you, your little ones and their dad.

No symptoms, Just risidual alcohal from the night befor.

Yes it could be her liver shut down.  I am considerably older ,could be my daughter in law,my grandchildren 2 as well and my son,

But it's me . Revived , only to be told I was one of those (no symptom cryptogenic Liver Persons. And I could die within 45 hours or 5 years. That was three years ago. So I continue to wait. Not that it's any consolation. Only that it could happen. I don't drink smoke or do drugs no hepatitis Only when I was a child I had  hepA. Dr.s say that has nothing to do with it,

Again my deepest condolences.   cat