A Dollar Out of Fifteen Cents

I have early stage cirrhosis, or NASH. This is going to be a slow death, unless I can find a way to reverse the damage, or get a donor/transplant (I’m B+ blood type).  I have known for decades that I have a pre-fatty liver, with ALT scores in the high 100s for several years while in my 20s and 30s, my GP telling me it’s an issue, and living a life that minimized the importance of this.  I always thought I would be able to address this later in life. Well, later is now.   

I started binge drinking in 7th grade.  A group of friends all paid $10 each and my friend’s older brother bought the 6 of us a case of Schaefer beer– literally $8 a case. And it was piss-warm.   Throughout middle school we would raid friends’ parents’ liquor, oftentimes subbing the stolen vodka with water.  My friend and I would sell his dad’s Ron Rico rum stash to my older brother for $10 a glass jar. My brother once gave me an empty glass salad dressing bottle to fill up with rum.  What a degenerate.  We would also shoplift bottles of syrupy Schnapps and Mad Dog, Old Dan Tucker, and other bottom shelf liquor from Rite Aid and Revco, conveniently in a back corner of the store. These fit easily in our waistband. I remember puking my guts out in 8th grade after drinking a bottle of Mad Dog grape. I can still taste that God-awful syrupy taste and just threw up a little in my mouth thinking about it. 

We drank a lot.  I lived by a large city park, and had very unattentive parents at home, so I would routinely have friends over on school nights in high school. My bedroom led to the sun room in the back that had an exterior door, so it was easy to sneak friends in and out.  I had gatherings pretty regularly. I even had a cooler back there filled with beer for about 2 years. I can’t believe my parents never realized this.  

It made it a lot easier with my older brother being in a similar mindset, and also having friends over regularly doing the same shit, but not access to the sunroom. He’d sneak them in through the window in his bedroom.  He had bottles of liquor in plain sight in his bedroom. 

I had a fake ID by 10th grade. I found this random National Student Exchange program in a magazine and signed up for free, and they sent me an ID, where I simply had to add my own picture and hand write in my birthday and age, so at age 15 I was 21. This thing was so ratchet— it wasn’t cut properly and I literally had it taped closed with regular Scotch tape. I used this in the ghetto part of town that was only a few blocks away at several convenience stores, and used this for a few years, believe it or not. I can’t believe that worked once, let alone for a few years.  I actually still have it– I found it in my old ‘stash drawer’ at my mom’s house recently.   

When I got to college my freshman year, my older brother gave me his state-issued fake ID, and just like that I became 24 year old at age 18.  I found the courage to bring that to the license bureau in my college town and had my picture added to the State ID. I used this fake ID on several occasions when cops busted me for public urination. I had a public peeing problem, and was busted 3 times in 1 year, using my fake ID for all those instances. My fake ID is a wanted man in the state of Ohio.  When I turned 21, I gave that to my friend who looked nothing like me, and he was now 27 year old. That didn’t last very long, but had been through 4 people.  

I was the party boy in college. The life of the party.  I had the tolerance of a sailor, and binge drank probably 4-5 nights a week. I was uncomfortable sober. I was drinking to escape a lot of deep-seeded issues and childhood trauma.  I was also a bartender in my later college years, so every night I worked was an open bar for me.  I also popped a lot of pills– primarily painkillers and Valium.  Valium and a long night of booze would cause me blackouts, sometimes putting me in precarious situations or leading to aggressive behavior.  

When I became a functional adult I still binge drank on weekends both Friday and Saturday. I made some killer drinks, and appreciated good wine. I had a well stocked bar which was used frequently.  

I also like food– a lot. I am Italian, so carbs have been my thing. I never met a pizza I don’t like.  Pizza Friday starts the weekend.  Tacos. Queso. Steak. Burgers. Chicken wings.  As my income evolved, I moved to higher end shit-food.  

I was also a workout warrior and a decorated athlete in baseball and wrestling.  I started doing pushups and crunches in 5th grade with my older brother when he made the varsity middle school baseball team. Herschel Walker was one of the big athletes at that time, and that was all he did, so figured it would work for me.  By 7th grade, I had become ripped.  By 8th grade my dad began referring to me as the Total Package, after my favorite pro wrestler, Lex Luger. I was a meathead, working out several hours a day, separate from sports.  While this was going on, I would still find a way to drink and actually had some of my best games hungover, so I thought that was my own version of a PED (performance enhancing drug).  I began dabbling in workouts supplements in college, and was taking a bunch of crap I didn’t even know what it did, just because. Creatine. Phosphagen, Glutamine, Ultimate Orange, fat burning pills. I was ready to run through walls like the Kool-Aid man before hitting the bench. All kinds of legal steroids, as my stepfather would say, but I was the total package.  I went on to be a personal trainer in the evenings and weekends when I started teaching, versus coaching, since the pay was significantly better.  I made more money as a personal trainer part time than as a teacher, but that is a whole different talking point.  

All those years of lifting small cars with my 5’9” frame took a toll on me physically, and the weight loss and starvation and dehydration from wrestling, particularly losing 10% of or more of your body weight in such a short period of time.  We were under the impression that the lighter you wrestled the bigger advantage you would have. One of my favorite movies, VisionQuest, glorifies this. Some days in practice I would lose 11-12 pounds of water weight. One day in practice I lost 14 pounds– this was coincidentally the only time my head coach dressed to wrestle me. As I passed out while circling him, I remember hearing him saying, “get up, you pussy..” as I crumbled. I fainted a few times in the hallway during the school days, but considered that as a status symbol of my progress and hard work. I wrestled 145 lbs my Senior Year, but was normally in the 160s off season. My body fat was under 7% year round, and under 6% for wrestling.  I wrestled briefly in the 170s in college, but my weight had grown to around 200 lbs with all the working out. I was built like a brick shit house. I would regularly workout with football players in college, and outlift them each time to their amazement, considering I was considerably smaller then them.   When I was a trainer, my weight was in the 185-195 lbs range with sub 10% body fat. I was benching 365 without a spot, repping 315 for sets of 8, and doing 225 (grown man weight) for sets of 24. I could incline 335 with ease.  Gym goers would pause their workouts at the gym to watch me on a set.  

My frame couldn’t handle all this mass. By age 26 I was having significant back problems, and I had to have my spine fused from all the wear and tear at age 29. I was on a lot of pain meds for several years leading up to that due to the sciatic pain shooting down my legs and incredible stiffness in my lower back. I already liked pills, so some Flexeril and booze, or Hydrocodone and wine was normal for me. If 1 worked good, I was confident 2 would work better. And this was when the medical industry and pharmacies were not regulating how many pills were being distributed as they do today, so I basically have had an unlimited supply of renewed prescriptions since my mid-20s, when I first ‘broke’ my back.  You become good at being resourceful with med seeking behavior, which I clearly have had.  

I decided to see a GP for annual check ups when I was in my mid 20s.  My ALT scores were outrageous from my first test on.  The normal cut off for a regular ALT score is below 60, and I had scores as high as 161, and was annually in the 80-140 range for almost a 20 year window.  This was alarming obviously, and as a result I binge drank less, and cut back on my frequency, but didn’t really touch my diet, and still popped pills regularly for the pain. I had friends who would be concerned about their own pre-fatty liver diagnosis, and I didn’t understand why they were so freaked out. I mean, I had ALTs more than double the normal level for years and I appeared OK,  so what was their concern?

I was self destructive. I have had PTSD due to childhood trauma most of my life. I honestly didn’t give a shit about my future, as I didn’t ever think about living that long, or what that would look like. I really thought I’d probably be dead from an intoxication related issue by the time I reached my current age. My PTSD is legitimately life altering. I have had a life of depression, anxiety, and reckless behavior as a result. Consequences simply didn’t matter to me, and I can count on one hand how many times I was held accountable since my older brother was also messy and my parents were so overwhelmed with our working class lifestyle, that they didn’t have time to appropriately supervise me/us. I also have no concept of moderation. I binge drank, I binge eat, I literally overuse everything. EVERYTHING in access. When I smoked weed, I would eat a couple thousand calories in munchies after 10pm, and did so for years. Literally 2,000 calories after 9pm on the daily.  In the mornings the kitchen counter would be evidence of the carnage I unleashed the night before.  I don’t really buy crappy food, but when you have 7 greek yogurts, half a bag of some kind of crackers, a pint of gelato, and whatever else I can get my hands on all in 1 seating at 11pm from being stoned out your gourd, weight happens, and visceral fat in your liver happens. Thank God I worked out daily when I was able to. 

Mix the awful eating habits with years of pills, and a long and storied history of alcoholism, workout supplements just because I was told they’d get me ripped, and bad decisions, and it creates a scary situation.  My liver has now been scarred from decades of bad decisions, toxins, pain meds, substance abuse, supplements, pollution, and doing NOTHING in moderation.  I had no idea multi-vitamins can be toxic.  I thought mushroom coffee was good for you. I didn’t know the menthol in Vicks was processed through the liver. CBD is highly toxic. I had no idea as a child that whatever I was exposed to as a youth, including pollution, paint fumes from working for my dad’s home improvement company for many years as a teenager, and environmental toxins would still haunt me 40+ years later. All the stress and PTSD just added to that inflammation.  

One thing in my control is the fat in my liver.  I’m assuming it’s similar to visceral fat. My liver is inundated with 83% fat– literally a slithery, fatty, organ just being pickled in gluttony.  Foie gras.  I have almost eaten myself to death, like that slob in the movie Seven.  That is on me. I was an athlete and always had a high metabolism in my youth. My grandma used to nag me about seeing my ribs, etc.. I simply couldn’t put on weight, despite being a ‘good eater’, or getting the ‘eating star’ nightly, as my dad would say. It was ingrained in my head that I could eat whatever without any accountability. I finally filled out around 20 years old. Fast forward to my mid-20s. I started to break physically starting around age 26.  I needed spinal fusion surgery at age 29. I no longer had that high metabolism, and no longer walked everywhere, or had the constant activity I had when I was younger. I used to workout in some capacity 3-4 hours a day between practice and my own workouts, or games. After my spinal surgery that changed.  I was also prescribed an unlimited amount of painkillers, which I took in abundance, often with alcohol. I like my alcohol and I like my food.    

I have now been told for almost 2 decades that I need to watch my weight. Most recently, I have had 8 straight years of different orthopedic breakdowns. This started in 2016,with severe sciatic pain as a result of neck stenosis of 70% obstruction in my neck from wrestling and whiplash, and this was aggravated from moving in with my girlfriend. Lifting all those boxes and carrying a footlocker in each arm on my shoulders on my own was a bad idea apparently. That episode of severe neck sciatica lasted about 4 months with extreme pain. EXTREME pain. 

In 2017, I had a mole removed from the bottom of my big toe that became infected and cost me about 7 months of considerably lessened activity. Every step I took aggravated the healing. As a result of the infection, my walking mechanics changed to keep weight off my injury with the big toe, and that caused nerve damage on the other side of the foot by my smaller toes due to the change in my walking mechanics.  This Morton’s Neuroma got worse and the shooting nerve pain was debilitating and totally random. Take the air out of you randomly while unloading the dishwasher kinda pain.  Would buckle me it hurt so bad.   It was shooting and burning sciatic nerve pain in my toes that would appear out of nowhere. Hurt enough to sit my fat ass down for a minute while I would gasp in pain. Legit shooting pain that was out of the blue an 8 out of 10. You know the feeling of stubbing a toe— multiply that by 10.  

While dealing with the nerve pain in my foot, I then sprained my ankle on the same foot as a result of trying to avoid a lady taking photographs on a sidewalk at the top of my street that is a hot spot for professional photographers.  The lady intentionally nudged me off the walking path because I interrupted her shoot, and caused me to roll my ankle. I tried to walk that off for several months, until I eventually needed to see a Podiatrist and then go through a series of numerous stem cell injections for several months that were also incredibly painful. The horse needle used to inject my foot was about the width of a stirring straw, and there were normally 10-12 injections per visit throughout the lower ankle and just above my toe line. I would leave there bloody and with the throbbing of a cinder block dropped on my foot.  The topical medicine I was given, Diclofenac, worked well, but is awful for the liver. Who knows what was in the shots and how that impacted my liver, and the Tramadol is no bueno for the liver, as well.  

Once the foot finally improved, the stenosis in my neck flared back up for about 4 months, which was by far the worst sciatic pain I have ever had. It literally felt like my left arm was on fire with active flames non-stop for a few months, with intermittent throbbing up and down my arm.  The throbbing felt like getting hit with a fast ball repeatedly in numerous spots up and down the arm– all while the feeling of flames radiated from my neck down to my wrist. This pain was a 9 out of 10, with a 10 being the imagined feeling of being ripped in half.  Legit pain. I couldn’t even sleep it hurt so bad and was relentless. I wish that pain on no one. The pain lasted for months. 

While the neck and foot issues were going on, I began allergy vaccinations to deal with choking levels of nasal drip due to my being allergic to all the pollen in the air in Texas. I did that for a full year– sometimes 2-3 times a week, to try and expedite the tolerance. This was in 2020 during Covid lockdown. I had the exact same symptoms as Covid showed– to the point where I was choking on phlegm daily, and coughing up thick and heavy mucus that resembled dark embolisms. I literally couldn’t breath and my oxygen levels would drop to danger zones throughout the day. I had skin reactions where the shots were placed that swelled up to the size of tennis balls, and I felt like death for 12 full months–during Covid. I was convinced I had Covid with those awful early strains that were incredibly lethal.  I stopped treatment after 12 months– it was too difficult and literally felt like I was killing myself with nasal drip, exhaustion, congestion, and anxiety.  All that inflammation and stress on my body from the allergy vaccinations didn’t help the liver.    

After these cleared up, it took a few months to get back to feeling OK again, I then went on a good workout routine in early 2021, while still in lockdown. I was able to lower my weight 20 lbs from an inflated upper 250s to the upper 230s, and felt like I was back on a path to fitness. I needed to still lose about 30 pounds to get back to looking good, but felt that was very doable within a year’s time and now that I could be active again. Then the back injury reemerged. This was mid-2021. As soon as those early sciatic pains started in my lower back and legs I knew that the injury would continue to deteriorate, but felt I had a few years before needing another spinal fusion. That is exactly what happened. In 2022 my girlfriend and I went to San Diego and I was using those George Costanza scooters to get around the Zoo. I needed to get one of those scooters due to the evolved sciatica that had greatly limited my mobility. Here I was, this large framed middle aged man, stoned on a smorgasbord of edibles, zipping around people while making race car sound effects. When we got back I was finally able to get the steroid injections in both my neck (still bothered me quite a bit, but not nearly as bad as it had been since that comes and goes periodically) and lower back in consecutive months of August and September. Those shots are not good for the liver.  Also in August I got Covid, which is incredibly ruthless on one’s liver. 

By February of 2023 I was not able to even walk down the steps without needing to take a break. I live on the top floor with no elevator and had to take breaks at the landing on each floor’s steps. While out walking the dog I would need to hold onto the walls just walking due to sciatic pain. I was pretty much crippled with pain and immobility from the waist down.  Every time I would change positions in bed trying to find some relief I would get zapped with terrible shooting sciatic pain that peaked at about an 8 on the pain scale. This was relentless and non-stop.  All day, every day, and getting worse daily.  My arms would be shaking from propping myself up on the side of the bed just trying to get to the bathroom. I had to have maintenance install a bidet because I couldn’t wipe and got a shower seat because I didn’t trust my balance while showering. 

Throughout this whole 8 year window of nonstop orthopedic issues my mental health took a major hit.  I also work from home in our converted dining room, so I can never unplug from my highly stressful sales job. The desk is right there off the kitchen, and the first room you get to after leaving the bedroom. It’s inescapable. For several years I was in World War III with my girlfriend that I shared a 2 bedroom apartment with. It has been described to me as going through a sloppy divorce that I couldn’t escape from. She is a middle school teacher, so that Covid lockdown was intense with both of us in highly stressful careers working from our 2 bedroom home in separate rooms. It was an incredibly volatile environment. Mix in the stress from my orthopedic injuries and those damned allergy vaccination shots, plus the insanely stressful Covid lockdown and socio-political environment. Life sucked. My mental health was in shambles.  I thought this was causing a lot of the physical symptoms I had that were actually tied to liver damage, such as rigors and daily stomach distress.  

In early 2022 I finally saw a Liver doctor. The Liver health was a medical priority of mine, but I had bigger concerns about my lungs from the vaccinations/Covid lockdown, my heart due to my concerningly high cholesterol and family history of heart disease, my bloated weight,  numerous concussions I had throughout my life, and thought that was contributing to my mental health state and rigors with possible CTE damage, and obviously my back and neck that caused me immobility. Liver was the 7th priority after all these other ailments.  In any other time of my life the Liver would be top priority. The heart doctor put me on a Statin and that quickly lowered my cholesterol to healthy levels, which gave me a false sense of security. I was able to lower my ALT temporarily while working with the Cardiologist to healthy levels again as result of my weight loss and the Statin. I was under the impression that the ALT and AST scores were the only ones that mattered for Liver health, and those had improved significantly. I felt bullet proof.  Turns out Statins are awful for your liver and I was on high dosage daily.  

As a result of all these orthopedic issues, my liver was fed a several year steady diet of Tramadol, Flexeril, Weed, CBD, Statins, and whatever else the doctors injected into me. Plus, all the over the counter garbage I used regularly, like cough medicine, Vicks, migraine meds, and such. I was back on daily doses of strong pain meds starting in March of 2023– led by Lyrica, a harsh nerve block that really did help the sciatic pain, but intensified my liver inflammation.  I had my spine fused for the 2nd time in late April, and was on heavy doses of Oxy, Lyrica, Hydrocodone, and Tramadal, and muscle relaxers for several more months. As a result of the incapacitation, my weight had ballooned up to 274 lbs. Heavyweight wrestlers are cut off at 275. I was a pound shy of being too heavy to wrestle heavyweight, when I wrestled 172 in college 20 years earlier. I am disgusted even typing this. I looked like a meatball with arms, legs, and a fat face. 

As 2023 started I was already aware of the liver damage that was evolving, but my mental health issues and the spinal fusion took priority. I couldn’t focus on my liver knowing that all the pain meds would damage the heck out of it further, despite my efforts.  I was right.  I then got Covid again in August (literally a year after the first time), which is of course ruthless on its liver inflammation causing side effects.  I just can’t catch a break.  

So here we are. I had my follow up appointment and testing for my liver earlier this week, and I anticipated bad news due to the pain meds and Covid. I was correct. Although I’ve been able to get my weight down from 274 to the mid-250s after about 3 months from exercising again, the inflammation in my liver has now advanced to early stage cirrhosis with scarring starting that is most likely not reversible. The inflammation is from all the abuse I have put on it over the years.  I also have 83% of my liver filled with fat– I have no idea how the blood even flows through all that lard. I am experiencing the early stages of most of the symptoms that go along with this.  Foot and leg cramps daily, hand cramps, itchiness in my hands and lower legs, IBS, heavy mucus/congestion, exhaustion, malaise, my wounds heal slower, I get rigors, I wake up sweaty, bloody gums, a dull ache in my liver area that feels like I’m leaning against something, and the worst of all– I can literally see my fat liver bulging out through my midsection that is about the size of a medium pizza slice.  It looks like I have one very pronounced upper ab muscle in an otherwise chubby gut. I am a mess. I went into my recent appointment expecting to hear bad news, and knew I’d be prioritizing the Liver Heatlh A, B, and C now that I’m to the point of working out again daily. It’s one thing to anticipate something, but to actually hear it said to you is a whole differ

ent can of worms. I immediately went into mental panic. I walked home from the doctor’s office versus cabbing it back to help myself process the news. Conveniently, I only live 2 miles from the Med Center and was able to get in my cardio for the day on that walk. 

The doctor told me that all I can really do is cut out the toxins I ingest daily and lose a shitload of weight. To say I’m overwhelmed is an understatement. I love food. The first several days I was in a constant state of panic attacks. I would wake up 2 hours earlier than I needed to in a state of anxiety. My heart rate would be 120 at 5:30am. To make it worse, my mom was in a car accident last week that left her hospitalized for 3 days back home in Ohio, 1,200 miles away. I was already feeling vulnerable from that before I got the medical news. I also am having incredible amounts of work stress, some of the worst I’ve had in my 11 years of employment with the company. Work is incredibly toxic and stressful these days. Plus, I’m having financial issues, mostly tied to all the medical bills I’ve accrued over the last several years.  I have had several bouts of emmotional breakdowns, where I find myself crying about my situation and related stress. The hardest part is that I have legitimate anxiety issues, and high stress, and I can’t take anything to calm down.  I don’t want to die, and I am drowning in chaos from other areas. I am getting hit from every direction.  

I have too much I want to still do in life. I am just now starting to understand life. I want to be here longer than another handful of years with a decent quality of life.  I’m not ready to die. I need to make weight just like in my wrestling days, but this time do it smartly.  

Last night (night 4 after diagnosis), I finally had a chance to process the information, and equally important, had the chance to plan a diet with the information the doctor provided for me. I know I am in bad shape currently, but I can lose 10-12 pounds a month safely with how fat I currently am. Shit, I’ve already lost 5 pounds this week alone from unintentionally fasting by not knowing what I could safely eat. That first night I had no idea what I could eat, so I ate a whole bag of broccoli before discovering that the Vitamin A in there is highly toxic to the liver if you go above the daily allotment, which I had consumed 900% of, so I had to induce vomiting.  I discovered that a lot of my daily supplements I am taking are actually toxic to the liver. Some of these I’ve been on for years, like my multi-vitamin. Other stuff, like the CBD and Edibles and mushroom coffee are more recent in their use, but have been taken in abundance, as I do everything. I was popping 3-4 CBD gummies at a time, 4-5 times a day– -literally going through almost 4 bags a week. CBD oil is incredibly toxic to a liver and here I have been popping these like they are candy.  

I did a hard stop on pretty much everything except my Statin drug for my cholesterol, which is also bad for my liver, but a necessary evil– I’m skipping days instead. I haven’t taken anything for my panic attacks, although I could sure use a fat joint or my Lorazepam right now. I am not even taking my allergy meds. I’ve lost 5 pounds so far this week. I went to Whole Foods today and dropped over $700 on groceries on things I can eat. I’ve started fasting 16 hours a day, and have cut my calories to under 1,300 daily, but need to get this up to around 1,900 a day once I wrap my head around my new diet. This is on top of the workouts I had already started, which include over 10,000 steps a day and light weight training and push ups. 

I have a plan, and have aggressively implemented this like my life depends on it, because it does. I have a chance to get to liver fat reduction weight loss levels within the next 2 months, which is suggested to lose about 10% of your body weight, and can be back to a good looking weight of the low-200s  by my next testing procedure in 6 months. Based on my current trajectory, I will be almost 40 pounds lighter by then, which should have a significant reduction in my liver fat and visceral fat, and hopefully stop the scarring from continuing to evolve–possibly reverse some of it. I will probably always have a ‘bad liver’ if I make it through this with the current plan intact, just like I have a bad back and bad neck, but that’s better than being dead. Plus, the lifestyle change will only benefit me in pretty much every aspect of my life. I can do this. I need to make weight.