this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
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Giving a donor liver to an alcoholic, who only quit drinking upon diagnosis? Hell no. There are people with 5+ years who still worry about relapsing. A year is a start. Being forced to quit? I'd have wished her good luck if they gave the liver, but the person who dies instead of her?
I've watched alcoholics die of liver failure. It is a horribly sad thing. But sobriety is a choice, and you don't get to go back in time to make it. I'm not sure why this article is spinning this as cruelty from the transplant board instead of maybe, just maybe, highlighting the destructive role that alcohol plays in society. I wonder if a booze company pays their bills or something.
Did you bother to read the article? Her partner was a match, and could have donated a portion of their liver to her, if approved, as opposed to a donated liver.
Judge someone all you want for their previous life choices, but the decision referenced in this case should have been between the two of them and their doctor.
Yes, I read the article three times over, trying to chase down false info someone posted in here. His offer is irrelevant. The prognosis was not good enough for him to donate. They only included it in the article for the melodrama. It's nothing more than an "I would die for her!" moment. Well, I'm glad the medical board did not condone assisting him with suicide.
Please quote the article where it states her prognosis was not good enough for him to donate. All I'm seeing is a statement that her prior alcohol consumption was a factor in that decision.
Did you? Her liver was so far gone, doctors did lot believe a partial transplant would work
Second paragraph in: 'However, documents show the Alcohol Liver Disease (ALD) team at UHN rejected her in part because of "minimal abstinence outside of hospital." '
The article quotes Dr. Jayakumar making a general statement regarding alcohol diseased livers, but the University Health Network declined to comment on Amanda's specific case outside offering their (patronizing) condolences.
Feel free to quote the article and back up your statement.
This means she kept on drinking while not hospitalized
The rest is standard boilerplate, they can't speak about her detailed case in public
I'm sorry, maybe I'm just daft this week, but I missed the concept "the doctors believed her liver is so far gone, a partial would lot [sic] work" in that.
I quote: "Huska, he said, stopped drinking as soon as she was diagnosed with Alcohol Liver Disease on March 3 and had also registered for an alcohol cessation program to begin once she was discharged." So where does the article state she kept drinking while waiting for the transplant?
This was posted like 5 times and I assumed it was the same article... I'll find the link to the original one where they detailed this. In any case, she was not eligible because she was likely to go back to drinking and ruin the new liver...
I never said that... what the article says is that she was an alcoholic since late teens and was never able to stop. She literally only stopped drinking after she found out she was going to die, and that was only like 3 months. She tried to quit before but never succeeded... that tells you she was a super high risk of relapsing
"This means she kept drinking while out of the hospital", which directly contradicts the statement by the boyfriend saying she stopped drinking.
Everything else is like, your opinion, man.
Stopping to drink for a few weeks after you realize you are about to die from drinking... doesn't really make a difference here. Unfortunately, she was an alcoholic for most of her life and, before diagnosis, did not show any capacity to quit
So, even if she did stopped drinking 100% after May... it was just too late
That's your opinion. Where does the article state that?
It's literally what the article said... she stopped drinking after diagnosis
Here, second hand from her partner (my emphasis)
I'm not debating that she stopped drinking after diagnosis. I'm debating the rest of your opinion: "Stopping to drink for a few weeks after you realize you are about to die from drinking... doesn't really make a difference here. Unfortunately, she was an alcoholic for most of her life and, before diagnosis, did not show any capacity to quit
So, even if she did stopped drinking 100% after May... it was just too late"
So again, please back your statement up with a direct quote from the article. I'll wait, but excuse me if I don't hold my breath.
Oh so you want me to explain to you why there are medical directives that rule out life long alcoholics from receiving incredibly scarce organs for transplant?
There is a ton of info here (first link after googling alcoholism and relapsing)
https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/alcohol-abuse/alcohol-relapse-statistics/
No, I wanted you to quote the article. Here, I'll do it for you: "The survival rate of patients with alcohol-related liver disease who receive a deceased donor liver transplant has steadily improved to reach 80β85 per cent at one year after a transplant.
Studies show that living liver transplants for alcohol liver disease have similar survival rates to other forms of liver disease.
But a study from the University Health Network showed that 86 per cent of those with alcohol-induced liver damage who were referred for transplants were rejected. Only 14 per cent of those who applied were accepted, and just six per cent received a liver transplant. There is a concern that patients with alcohol use disorder will relapse, damaging the new organ, though studies show the risk is around 15 per cent."
... Which refutes your opinions. Gee, can't imagine why you didn't want to quote that.
I don't have to imagine why that board wouldn't want to find every excuse in the book to deny the patient the transplant either... Seems like they have several hundred thousand of them: "Using the most recent data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information on hospital bed costs (2016), Huskaβs time at the Oakville hospital likely cost over $450,000 - ($3,592 per day for ICU care) with an additional 61 days in a ward bed which likely cost about $1,200 a day
A liver transplant in Ontario is pegged at about $71,000 to $100,000 in Ontario based on data from 2019."
Yeah, that survival rate is for people that do not start drinking again... So, likely not her you know
You are allowed to make mistakes... What you are not allowed to do is skip the consequences
It's not like you can pick a liver at Walmart and give it a try. That liver could save someone else, giving it to an alcoholic is likely to only buy her a tad more time untill she relapsed
From the first article CTV made about this, linked in in the first sentence they posted. Seems like we need to actually fund mental health care in this country or something, because she's obviously been struggling for a while. You can see how the board would weigh previous failed attempts to quit against her.
Lol I quoted something from not just this article, but a second article they link to from the one above, but sure.
They blocked her, at least in part, because she was an active alcoholic who had not shown any signs of changing her behaviour outside of time inside the hospital. Something that would have weighed on their decision included medical information such as previous attempts to stop drinking. Mental health care, including healthcare for addictions, is lacking in Canada. You can't force someone to go into rehab, but offering better care and options might have helped her in the past.
As said in the main article as well as the one I read, in order to qualify for a living donation you need to qualify for a full donation, because if something goes wrong you'll need a full liver ASAP and get bumped to the top of the list.
Are you trying to argue that alcoholism shouldn't be a factor AT ALL for liver donations, or that living donations shouldn't also need to meet the standard full liver donation standards?
That would be nice if we had an unlimited supply of livers to transplant. Give everyone a chance.
Unfortunately I'd still rather give whatever liver we have on hand to someone guaranteed not to wreck it immediately, because giving her a chance means taking away someone else's.
No, not in this case, they weren't taking away someone else's chance. But you didn't read the article. Her boyfriend was a match and wanted to donate part of his liver. Donar A wanted to give to recipient B, there was no recipient C losing out. It was a closed loop.
She many have not even been the drunkard you all are assuming she was. If you go out once a month, and have 3 or 4 beers, you're not eligible for a liver transplant. That's ridiculous. You may not drink the other 30 days of the month, but that one Saturday ruined it for you; you die.
A life was forfeit, because some bean counters in white coats -probably not teetotalers themselves- deemed her not worthy. Even though it cost more to let her die,
A liver transplant in Ontario is pegged at about $71,000 to $100,000 in Ontario based on data from 2019.
That is because her boyfriend could only give her a partial transplant (he cannot donate his whole liver) and the doctors did not think it would work as her liver was too far gone to recover with a partial transplant
The rest of your comment is so far from reality or logic, I'm not going to bother addressing it
Her partner is the one saying she had an alcohol substance use issue. It's not "assumed" she was a drunkard, he stated it. I agree she should have been given the liver- she quit alcohol, she had a donor. We shouldn't punish people with alcohol use issues by killing them.
The liver wasn't thrown away, it was given to someone else. The liver still saved a life, unfortunately it wasn't hers.
Unless you're talking about the boyfriend's liver, in which case the doctor determined her condition would not survive a partial transplant, and the attempt would just kill her sooner.
I was talking about the general disturbing nature of determining organ transplants, yes I know re: the live donation from her bf
So again: The liver wasn't thrown away, it was given to someone else. The liver still saved a life, unfortunately it wasn't hers.
Imagine being the person denied a liver because they gave it to someone with a chronic alcohol abuse problem to "give them another chance".
No I meant her boyfriend had a partial liver he wanted to give her
Which is it?
Cutting out someone's liver to transplant isn't easy nor risk free. You are risking death to have a low probability of saving someone. It doesn't matter if they are volunteers.
Oh, way to move the goal posts!
Basically - fuck this person, right?
I assume you were not getting a transplant? The risks of regurgitation during surgery is in no way comparable to the risk of relapse in someone with hx alcohol use disorder in early remission. Addiction is a terrible beast. I am sad that she died too, but we have to blame the systems of addiction, not the medical board.
okay doctor. can you think of a reason why they aren't considered for a living donor? besides corruption and malfeasance?
Doctors are cops. Acab.
Adab