National Liver Awareness Month

Sdey0522

#DYK

October is National Liver Awareness Month! There are currently more than 9,000 adults and children in the U.S. waiting for a donor liver.

If you've benefitted from a life-saving liver transplant (either from a deceased or living donor hero), kindly share your story/experience so that others can relate/learn.

Also, if you are a living donor hero who has donated a portion of your liver to save someone, please share your experience (and THANK YOU! 🙏).

I realize that some of you may have shared your stories numerous times already, however, these accounts never get old. Please share. Thanks!

Dom

Thank you for sharing, Sam!! Much like the kidney, the liver usually sustains a good bit of damage before patients notice the symptoms. I wonder if liver enzymes and other associated tests are done during the blood work for yearly physicals?

AliEm14

@Dom I don't know about everywhere but I know here standard labs also include some liver enzymes.

For me it was baffling to learn about how much the liver does. I came to liver transplant through metabolics, but there's so many avenues one can come to need a liver transplant through. the liver is so adaptive and can take so many hits, but then one tiny thing can derail the entire system. Looking back now I can see how many adaptations appeared in other areas of my body as a result of my liver taking hits but it became a bit of a puzzle in figuring out the liver was the thing that connected it all. (being in a rare disease camp also didn't help. very few people know about the condition I have much less how to treat it, especially 30 years ago when I was coming up through the system)