Liver to LRA: "Payback, it's a bitch."

After Pooti's comments here and other places, I started looking into the whole liver problem thing. I used to make jokes about my liver shuddering, but now it seems the joke's on me.

For someone who's abused their body as shamefully as I have--it would be easier to list the drugs I haven't done, and let's not forget the thousands of gallons of spirits consumed by yours truly--I've enjoyed good health other than being fat. I catch a cold maybe once every couple of years; my last illness with fever was the bout of "Red Sox flu" I caught this time last year. But the calendar doesn't lie. I'm in my early forties and it seems like my body is saying "hey, I've had enough of this shit" and turning on me. And my liver is leading the way. It's not quite at crisis mode yet--my eyeballs are still nice and white and I don't have any pain--but looking at my swollen feet and swollen stomach and having to catch my breath after bending over to tie my sneakers scares the crap out of me.

So today is day five of no alcohol (I'd been restricting it to weekends mostly but as with everything else in life I went way overboard and now look what happened). I've been eating fish and chicken and some green veggies ... okay, and a bunless hot dog here and there. My feet are still blowing up but today was the first time in a while that I haven't felt so bloated it seemed like it was hard to breathe, and I've been sleeping a little (emphasis on little) better. I'm also going to start taking milk thistle capsules since per my research it's supposed to be good for improving liver function. I splurged for a good brand, so we'll see if that makes a difference.