Reading news recently, I read about a musician who died of cirrhosis. What surprised me is that the article stated that he had no idea he had it until the end of his life. How on earth is that possible?
Do symptoms not present sometimes? A quick check of Wikipedia shows dozens of symptoms and also states that they may not be present. But for NONE of them to be present? Seems crazy.
So, how does your average Joe-beer-lover know if they have it or not? Does a routine physical’s blood work test it?
It made me think back to my days as a professional drinker (I think it was called college) where I had 4-8 drinks per day every day. It’s been years since then, and I probably have 4-6 drinks per week now; always beer (which is still too much per most doctors).
Well, I know this is GQ where anecdotes aren’t really up to the standard, but I can attest that it is definitely possible.
It happened to my dad.
Generally, I feel that alcoholics don’t have much regard for their health. He never went to the doctor. He did have symptoms, but I suppose he didn’t care enough to get it checked out.
So, to answer your question, even if people say they had ‘no idea’, I feel like often times they do suspect it. People who drink heavily enough to get cirrhosis probably expect that they have liver damage even WITHOUT symptoms. It would be strange not to. But suspecting it is an entirely different matter from going to the doctor and getting it diagnosed.
Also, it’s pretty easy to misinterpret some of the symptoms or deny them, so that could be the case here.
Finally, from searching online, it appears that some sources are saying the disease is asymptomatic in 30-40% of cases. I don’t have the savvy to sift through the medical journals to verify that, though.
You can certainly have advanced liver disease (including cirrhosis) and not know it. An example of sudden death from cirrhosis is bleeding from esophageal varices, which may be asymptomatic.
While the kind of heavy/prolonged drinking (or non-alcohol related etiologies) that produce cirrhosis and its complications typically involve symptoms of some kind, they won’t necessarily be so bad as to force people to seek medical care until a major crisis or fatal event occurs.