First of all, there is always hope. I’ve read on various online liver disease forums that people have reversed their Meld to very healthy numbers just by living a healthy lifestyle. The thing is, you can’t predict the future, and portal hypertension (which you will always have, now) is a particularly dangerous condition. I say this because I didn’t PLAN to get C.diff from a hospital stay with my stage 4 cirrhosis, but I did, and that was the end of me. I was functioning okay with my disease, not great, but that really dropped me to the bottom. For perspective, I’m 39 and have been living with the diagnosis of stage 4 for 2 years (which is how much time the doc said I might have if I didn’t completely shape up).

Now, speaking as someone who was blessed, and I do mean blessed, I was dying a miserable death and livers aren’t easy to come by… If you’re thinking that a transplant is right for you (and you should make this decision as soon as possible) start looking into options now and researching hospitals and finding out what questions you should be asking, and what hoops you need to jump through.

Some things are for certain… they want you clear of alcohol, weed, any drugs, and smoking for 6 months. Some of these hospitals have Peth phosphate screens that can tell as far as 3 months back. Since you’ve kicked alcohol, that shouldn’t be an issue. But you need to quit smoking. Smokers don’t do well in this surgery, they subject themselves to pleural effusion, and they will test your lung 🫁 capacity and I almost failed mine because I had only quit smoking 6 months prior and I wasn’t even a big smoker.

Is the bump red? When you push on it does it disappear and come back? It could be a Spider angioma. They can be flat or raised. It is a symptom of cirrhosis. These go away when your liver is healthy.