Oh, yeah, I’m not looking for medical advice - I am under the care of a physician. I was just taunting Chief Pedant (and if he can come up with something my doctor can’t, more power to him).
Probably Ebola Virus.
Do you take statins? They can elevate the liver enzymes.
100?? Bah. That’s not very high. Often they’re in the thousands.
Tell your doctor some 15 year old kid pretending to be an experienced physician on the internet said it was probably an atypical intermittently torsed appendix epiploica of the transverse colon.
That oughtta shut him up for a while. Plus he won’t have any mechanism to diagnose it and prove me wrong.
I KNEW it!
Okay, so now I’m a little more freaked out. The re-test showed that my enzymes are more elevated, and comparing to a previous test, they have been slowly but steadily climbing. So, now we have a whole mess of tests - seriously, some of them the lab tech had never even heard of before.
Also booked is an ultrasound (March 2).
The doctor feels it’s an auto-immune response brought on by an allergic reaction from the antibiotics from the dog bite in late August.
Excellent.
Last step is a liver biopsy, which sounds decidely unpleasant.
Liver biopsy is a piece of cake - but take some good books and a mp3 player fully charged. There is a few minutes ultrasound as the practitioner finds a way through your ribcage, a quick jab as the local goes in all the way down to the liver capsule, then a simple painless click as the biopsy is taken. After the biopsy, you have to lie on your right side for several hours in case there is bleeding in the liver. This is boring. Really boring. After an hour I wanted to go home. After 3 hours I had finished my books and my mp3 player was low on power. 6 hours was hell.
I hope the tests turn out ok - liver issues can be a bit scary. I’ll be chasing up my liver function results later this week after my 1st 3 months of Tenofovir - an antiviral to treat chronic Hepatitis B. Hopefully, liver function will be improving and HepB DNA will be starting to go down.
Si
I have had 2 liver biopsies and they are not a big deal. You have to lie on your side for 2 hours after the biopsy and that is not fun for me. The night after the biopsy I was very sore but the 2nd night I was OK.
I have what is called fatty liver which is pretty common , most people don’t know they have it. I got tested because my enzymes were high due to gallstones but my gallbladder was removed and now they are back to normal.
Thanks guys it does help to chat with people that have been through it. My big thing right now is, as a migraineur I have regular migraines (like yesterday and backgrounding today), and am scared to take stuff, even though the doctor said not to worry. Oh well, hopefully the many vials of blood will lead to an answer.
What was the sequence of events there? You got your liver biopsied as part of diagnosing the gallbladder?
I’ve got to get my enzymes rechecked; they were high (noted above) during my initial acute (though I didn’t think it was “cute” at all) gallbladder flareup. The surgeon told me that they were still high when I had the pre-op bloodwork a month after the initial flareup.
So I’ve got to get them rechecked. I’m hoping I don’t have a biopsy in my future!
I wouldn’t be surprised if I have a fatty liver; I’ve got fatty everything-else :p!
I had pain that was typical of gallstones but they could never see any stones on ultrasound. They checked my enzymes and they were high. They gave me a bunch of blood tests but all were normal so they eventually did the biopsy which showed I had fatty liver. My enzymes went back to normal and the pain went away.
3 years went by and I was OK but then the pain came back and the ultrasound showed stones so I had my gallbladder removed.
A few years back I was in a small car wreck and they did a CAT scan which showed my liver was larger than normal. They did an ultrasound and biopsy that showed once again I had fatty liver but they said my liver was normal sized. Fatty liver is not really a problem and as I mentioned many people have it but don’t know it , you need a biopsy to find it. There really is no treatment for fatty liver other than lose weight and eat better - cut down on fatty food/junk food.
My ALT and AST levels were determined to be slightly elevated back in 2003. I had an ultrasound that didn’t find any abnormalities. The next step was supposed to be a liver biopsy, but I never wanted to go through with it. Routine blood analysis as a prerequisite for qualifying for life insurance in 2008 once again showed they are a bit elevated, but apparently not enough to disqualify me.
This reminds me I should probably have a physical again and get to the bottom of things. I suspect for me that it is merely a “fatty liver” that might predispose me to worse things later in life, but is benign in and of itself. I’m of average weight for my height so I can’t just lose weight and hope it resolves itself.