>It’s All Fun and Games Until Your Liver Stops Working

>I have struggled to find funny things to write about over the past two weeks, but what I didn’t let on here was that Halloween night? Was awful.

On the surface, we looked just like every other family in suburbia. Hubs drove our 14-year-old to a friend’s house for a Halloween party, then came home to help me take the little ones door-to-door for an hour or so. But as we walked through the dark neighborhoods and listened to Punky squeal with excitement, our smiles were strained, our enthusiasm faked. A cold lump of terror had settled in my stomach and I was conscious of it with every step.

I looked at other husbands and wives out on the sidewalks, taking pictures and video of their kids, bickering with each other over whether it was time to go back in or not- and I bitterly resented them. You have no idea, I thought, looking at a young, healthy-looking father who nodded pleasantly at me while we waited for our children in front of one house, You have absolutely no idea how lucky you are.

“Are you feeling okay?” I asked Hubs over and over and over again. “Do you want to go home? Are you sure you’re okay?” “Yeah, I’m okay,” he’d say with false bravado. We didn’t talk about it much, but I could tell that he was as scared as I was.

Because on Halloween night, Hubs’s liver wasn’t working right. In fact, for the last few days, we weren’t sure if it was working at all. And although he wasn’t feeling any pain and he was still able to walk around and do things, we both knew that you just can’t live very long without your liver.

If you read this blog regularly, you’ll remember that Hubs got a staph infection a few weeks ago from a mole on his arm. That in itself was a bitch; he was put on two antibiotics and ended up going to the emergency room two different nights on doctor’s orders, suffering from a high fever. The team of dermatologists treating his case as well as the emergency room staff told him the staph infection was merely working its way through his body. They told him what he was experiencing was normal, even when he began feeling nauseated, and even when his urine turned dark a few days later. When he woke up one morning itching uncontrollably, he called his doctor’s office twice about it, knowing something wasn’t right, but no one even bothered to call him back. It wasn’t until he went to work the next day and his co-workers noticed by early afternoon that he was starting to turn yellow that he knew he had a serious problem.

Look up jaundice on the Internet (like Hubs and I did a hundred thousand times over the last week). There’s nothing good about it. Nearly everything associated with adult jaundice is serious. Deadly. Hubs finally dropped the dermatologists and went straight to our general practitioner, who set up an appointment for Hubs with a liver specialist. That was last Tuesday. The appointment was Friday. So for the next four days, Hubs and I were together here at home, trying to stay positive, but secretly fearing for the worst. My gut told me the medicine had caused all of this; all of his symptoms had begun after starting the antibiotics and one of the antibiotic sheets even said that if he experienced itching, if his urine was dark or if he became jaundiced, he should call his doctor immediately. However, we didn’t know anything for certain and in the meantime, the whites of Hubs’s eyes and his skin had turned so yellow that I found it difficult to even look at him, it terrified me so much. A thousand questions were going through my mind during those days. Was this it? Would life ever be normal again? What would happen to all of us? What would happen to Hubs? We had only had seven years together. I didn’t want to live without him. We still had so many plans together, so many things to do. We had four children to raise, for God’s sake, children who needed their daddy. I cried a lot when Hubs wasn’t looking. I prayed. I bargained with God. I know Hubs was going through far worse, because I’ve had a little taste of that worry myself. We talked about it a lot, but tried to remain positive, out loud anyway. It was a horrible, horrible week.

Finally, Friday rolled around and Hubs went to see the liver specialist. He called me, at home with the kids, and said that if the levels in his blood had dropped from Tuesday, he could go home. If they were up, he would have to check himself into the hospital. He’d find out in thirty minutes. Those thirty minutes were excruciating. Finally, he called. His levels were unchanged from Tuesday, but that was good enough. He could come home.

An ultrasound Monday confirmed that Hubs doesn’t have liver disease or cancer or gallbladder problems. It was the medicine. Thank God. He was diagnosed with an allergy to the medication he was taking for his staph infection. We now believe that all of those horrible symptoms he experienced were antibiotic related and not staph related at all. Dagnabbit! I’m more than a little perturbed that his obvious liver-related symptoms were ignored by his dermatologists. It seems to me that if someone called and said their urine had gotten darker, then called the next day and said they were itching all over, a doctor would at least consider that the person was having liver problems and needed to stop taking an antibiotic that’s known to cause liver problems!

And this is my excuse for not being around much lately. I knew I’d write about it eventually, whatever the outcome. But I wanted to wait until we knew what was going on. I didn’t think I could stomach well-meaning advice and concerns for the worst and besides, it wasn’t my story to tell. I wouldn’t have wanted Hubs to tell everyone he knew about my business before I knew what was going on myself.

Hubs and I have always been close. We think and act a lot alike, so it’s pretty much impossible for us to live together and not be close. But with a new baby who spurns sleep and three other children who demand most of our attention, it’s too easy to snap at each other when we’re tired or down. Since last week, though, we haven’t bickered at all. We’ve been reminded of how important we are to each other, how much we love each other and our family, how lucky we are to have what we have, and how quickly everything could change. Imagine if Hubs’s problems were caused by something more sinister. Imagine if things were never the same again. It could have happened. Remember that, please remember that. Look around you, at all you have, and remember to appreciate every small moment of it, both the good and the bad. Because none of us can afford to take anything in our lives for granted.