Hi, I have posted twice before and was so pleased to get my husband to go into hospital with all the symptoms of decompensated liver. He is on medication for detox and started panicking. He left the hospital to come home and keeps phoning me to collect him. He sounds agitated and says they are giving him bad medication and that his heart is racing and he can’t stay there. They have got him back to the ward but he wants a release form. He is not an aggressive man and is always nice to everyone. My own heart is racing and just don’t know what to do. Is it the medication that is affecting him or HE or the general detox. Would love for someone to let me know a similar situation as my heart goes out to him when he is panicking like this and he really needs help.
Really worried: Hi, I have posted twice... - British Liver Trust
Really worried
hi there, been through everything your husband is experiencing. Detox with medication will only be for around five days, after that all the meds will to help with possible HE, infections and vitamin deficiencies. Obviously no liver ward would prescribe meds detrimental to his health so being paranoid, or imagining things(mine was thinking all the medical staff were demons and i was on a spaceship🤦♂️, but if felt as real as any other experience )….could be a sigh of HE. Aggression is a classic sign of HE, especially in people who are not normally that way. I take it he has been drinking a long time, he has to now cope without that and that can cause overwhelming anxiety and stress. Although he may feel home is best, he needs to get as much rest as possible as his liver tries to recharge whatever cells are still coping with his poorly health. His diet will be crucial for recovery too, so no salt, plenty of fruit and good lean protein. There is little chance the hospital diet will help him so you may have to help with those things. Its a trying time for you both but there is hope! I was decompensated in April 2019, through patience, rest, proper diet, small amounts of exercise and so on, i was compensated again by December 2020. Please tell your husband there is hope and if he or you ever want to chat about side effects etc, please feel free to pM me. All the best.
Thank you for you reply. Such a worrying time and so pleased to hear that you got to compensated. I have just got home from the hospital and he is very tired and just sleeping. Managed to eat a small amount. His sodium levels are low so can’t take diuretics at the moment and he can’t remember the 30 hours sitting in A&E. He was given a couple of oxymoron painkillers and the doctor thinks this is what caused hallucinations and panic. He has a long road ahead and has started on the Librium but needs a plug done on his stomach fluid to check for infection. He looks so helpless that it really worries me. He has always drank a fair bit and for the past few years he has been drinking eight cans of lager a night. His body craves the alcohol now and he needs to be strong to kick this and I have to be strong to help him.
Please don’t worry about my advice about diet, exercise at this time. Just your hubby getting stabilised and learning to adapt will be difficult enough. The best years of my life came after becoming compensated, but it took ages for my body and mind to adapt…i truly hope your hubby can stick with it and look forward to aome great sober years ahead🙏💜
Like your husband, I'm a gentle bloke who strives to be pleasant and polite to everyone. In hospital, I always thank the nurses even if they cause me pain, as they do a very hard job under difficult circumstances and a small "thank you" can go a long way.However, when I was in with HE I decided I was going home and they needed security to stop me. I wasn't physically aggressive but apparently I was somewhat rude, to the extent that my Mum rang the next day to apologise! They were very good about it, they explained my out of character behaviour was due to HE and meds. I don't recall a single moment of any of this; my partner did tell me later she was worried as I was very poorly.
When I got a bit better and was told what happened I was mortified. I apologised to all the ward staff and sought out the security staff to apologise. To a person, they said not to worry and I had been a fairly nice pain in the arse compared to most. I bought the nurses flowers and chocolates when I was discharged.
Try not to worry too much about your hubbie. Reassure him he is in the best place with excellent treatment and care. Support him not to feel bad, his illness is causing reponses that he cant control right now, but it will get better soon. I was ashamed until it was stressed to me that it was HE misbehaving, not me. The worst of his symptoms should improve noticeably over the next few days. Best wishes to you both xx
I went through exactly the same when my lovely husband was admitted to hospital 5 years ago. Your husband is de-toxing and undergoing HE episodes for sure. Please, please do all you can to keep him in hospital and receiving treatment. He honestly is in the best place. Due to other complications - including a major fracture repair, my husband was in hospital for 8 weeks but then came home his “good” old self, apart from a bout of leg oedema. His liver is now compensated and he leads a completely normal life but he does have cirrhosis. He hadn’t drunk a drop since. I’m really wishing the same for you - stick with it. I know how hard it is!! By the way, the hospital staff all loved him - from the cleaners to the numerous surgeons and consultants who had to deal with him - and they all came to say goodbye when he eventually left. I can’t praise the treatment or kindness he was shown enough!
If he's detoxing, then what you described is precisely what I saw when I was in hospital a few years ago. A young lad, probably his early twenties, was admitted to the ward. He behaviour pretty much matched what you described. He was even arguing with the walls at one point.
It took a few days, but once that initial detox had lapsed the lad was a real nice guy, and was very apologetic about what he'd done. So please just hang in there. It'll take a few days, but if this is an alchohol detox, it should pass.
Thank you all for your lovely replies. This is such a worrying time and getting more comfort here from strangers than from my own family. I went in yesterday evening to see him and he was very weak and sleeping a lot, he ate a very small bit. He has forgotten all his time in A&E, it is worrying me that he has forgotten everything. He phoned me at 4.40am this morning to say he needs to leave the hospital and also again about an hour ago to say it is awful in there and he can’t stand up his legs are too weak and he needs to be in his own bed. I am sympathetic but encouraging him to stay, he has no choice now. He is now blaming me for putting him there but not in an aggressive way, more just blame. He has got a lot worse since he has gone in with weakness and memory loss, is this normal? I can’t get the ward on the phone at the moment to ask more questions. Go to bed at night with the sinking feeling that I am going to get a call that I have to go in and that he is dying. Makes it hard for me to sleep so feel I will fall into ill health as just over the flu. Really enjoy hearing all your backgrounds and stories. Thank you.
in my experience the weakness and memory loss is very normal - my husband was essentially “normal” on admission, the other symptoms only appeared a day or so after admission. Be aware that the weakness plus memory loss and other “mental” issues may take some time to resolve depending on how bad his decompensated liver is. My husband remained confused and bed bound for about 4 weeks and needed physio to get him walking again. But all did resolve. It did help that all this was pre-Covid and the hospital wasn’t as overstretched as they are now. I was actually able to stay all day, every day with him as he was so confused etc. and it meant the staff could concentrate on other patients. It also meant I knew exactly what was going on. I hope you can get some for information for yourself asap.
Thank you for your response. Hospital so busy probably isn’t get that much attention and hard for me to get through to a nurse or a doctor and he doesn’t answer his phone much. Only one visit a day which is in the evening for two hours. I have two teenage daughters at home that get liftS to school and college so wouldn’t be able to stay all day but would love the option to drop in anytime to check up on him. Gives me some hope when I hear stories like your husband’s and that people can come through this as I am so scared of losing him. Just hope that they are moving forward with a treatment plan for him. They have to take a sample of his stomach fluid to check for infection and try to get his sodium levels back up. Blood tests this morning also.
Terrified. Partner in ICU with liver failure/ARLD *UPDATED DAILY*
Hubby was admitted to hospital last night
What a day
Getting the call
Scared and worried
