From the day I was diagnosed with liver cancer, I learned that the hepatitis B virus had followed me for decades!

Reviewed by: Zhou Jian (Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University)

I was a teacher, and I had been around the three-foot pulpit in the village for half my life, and my life was very comfortable, and I didn't have a particularly big pursuit. When the daughters are older, I think more about them than teaching. Although the two girls are working adults, they are more worried than when they are around, and they always want them to start a family smoothly, and they can help with their children when they retire.

But I don't want to live my life as the one who worries my family when I get older.

Image source: Stand Cool Helo

Hepatic hemangioma was examined physically, and the hospital suspected it to be malignant

Since our two daughters worked, they have instructed our elderly couple to have regular medical examinations. In mid-March, when it was time for the physical examination as usual, I did a series of tests according to the plan given by the child. This time the money was not spent in vain, and after doing the color ultrasound, I received a report sheet of hemangioma. Fortunately, it is not too nervous, because I have heard people say before that hemangiomas are very common and not difficult to treat.

However, the younger son-in-law was more nervous and helped to make an appointment for a strengthened CT after 8 days at a nearby hospital. On March 28, the younger son-in-law returned from Baoding and accompanied her for an intensive CT examination.

The children were nervous, and I became the most comfortable one. It's not that I'm not afraid, it's that I secretly checked on the Internet, and the Internet said that hemangiomas are not a big problem, and I didn't take the test results to heart, and the children were fussy. But the children heard that it was a hemangioma on the liver, and they were still very cautious.

"Multiple liver occupants, consider malignant tumors!" The little son-in-law held the report sheet for strengthening CT, and I accidentally glanced at a line of words in the conclusion, and my heart fluttered, who is not afraid of this problem. The doctor who saw the results was going to prescribe me a hospitalization slip on the spot, but I was beating a drum in my heart: can the hospital at the doorstep look good on such a big problem?

"Doctor, wait a minute, let's go home and discuss." I blocked the doctor's prescription pen with my hand and decided to go to Beijing University Hospital.

The tumor grows rapidly, and doctors recommend surgery as early as possible

In addition to the headache and brain fever problem we will solve the nearest problem, once we encounter big trouble, we will go to Beijing Shangda Hospital for medical treatment. Just after the Qingming Festival, the little son-in-law took me to a third-class hospital in Beijing, hung up the number of hepatobiliary surgery, the doctor looked solemn after seeing the enhanced CT we brought, and immediately gave us an MRI examination to further clarify the condition.

The liver is multiple and the tumor diameter is one centimeter longer than a week ago. With such a result in front of me, I was relieved. The doctor advised us to operate as early as possible because the tumor grew too quickly.

Diagnosed, treated, no superfluous thoughts, we stayed in Beijing and other hospital beds. Those few days were relatively idle, and I also woke up from my initial fear and wondered what was going on. I'm hardly sick, and it's a big deal.

I never knew I had hepatitis B, and my mother died of liver disease

Reviewing the whole examination process, I remembered that when I was doing enhanced CT at home, the doctor said that I was a hepatitis B carrier. At the age of 55, I was told that I was a liver cancer and a carrier of hepatitis B, and before that I knew nothing about it, although my mother had cirrhosis and ascites.

In the first two years, I also had liver function tests, but no doctor said that I had problems with my liver. The information in the countryside is clouded, and I have never associated my mother's illness with myself. The old lady was very strong, her temper was very strong, and if she was not happy, she would not eat or speak for three or five days. Until I was diagnosed, I thought my mother had a liver problem because of her bad temper. Because the village doctor said, "People who often lose their temper are prone to liver problems."

But I am different, I have spent most of my life with the children in the village, and my temper is not as strong as my mother's, and I can get by with everything, let alone lose my temper with people in a loud voice. I rarely had harsh times in front of both girls. Therefore, I never thought that one day liver disease would also come to me.

I thought I was a "good-tempered" person, but these hepatitis B viruses brought from the mother's womb have always been with me and become a hidden bomb. Since then, I have also understood that liver disease is not directly related to "good temper".

Because I didn't know I carried hepatitis B, I often smoked and drank. The bad habits that these hepatitis B patients need to restrain are routine for me. Later, my eldest daughter read me a set of data and said that "the nicotine contained in cigarettes, like ethanol, the metabolite of alcohol, is extremely unfavorable to the liver and is one of the main risk factors for disease and liver cancer."

Knowing nothing about hepatitis B, I indulged these risk factors as they got closer and closer, pushing myself to the brink of liver cancer. People like me are not unique, there are many in China, there are in the same ward. About a week after I was hospitalized, a patient from Sichuan came to the next bed. He is also a hepatitis B to hepatitis cancer advanced, but before that, even if the unit has a physical examination every year, he knows nothing about the hepatitis B he carries, just like me, because hepatitis B is not a routine physical examination.

As a result, Chinese men like to smoke and drink, and he has not left a single thing behind. The only good thing is that we all had daughters who didn't smoke or drink, and they were vaccinated against hepatitis B from an early age. I only hope that they will not be infected with hepatitis B again and will not live in the panic of liver disease.

Later, we received a call from the hospital, and with the spare beds available, we went through the hospitalization procedures that night. On the morning of the 8th, various tests began to be done, and the doctor explained the condition to us after seeing the results of the various examinations.

He said that the part of the tumor that eroded accounted for more than 70% of the entire liver, plus I already had hepatitis B, the liver had hardened, and if the lesions were removed at once, the remaining liver would probably not be able to support the physical function and be life-threatening.

Faced with this situation, the doctor arranged a two-step operation for me to "ALPPS". The first step is to split the liver with tumor erosion and the "good liver", to ligate part of the blood vessel leading to the tumor, and after the operation, the blood flows more to the "good liver" part, and this part will grow; when it grows enough to meet the needs of the body alone, the second step is to completely remove the part of the tumor erosion. Through such a two-step operation, the purpose of completely removing the tumor can be achieved to ensure safety and complete resection.

The doctor told me that the difficulty of this kind of surgery is to perform two operations in a short period of time, the damage to the body is relatively large, and the hospital can perform robotic surgery. The delicate manipulation of robotic surgery can reduce trauma, which greatly increases the success rate of surgery.

Although it is a minimally invasive operation, it is also a surgery after all, and I have never had surgery, and I am a little nervous. Fortunately, the whole first stage of surgery went smoothly, and the doctor opened a small hole in my abdominal cavity, and there was a tool inserted in the small hole to split the entire liver, and the part where the tumor had grown was ligated.

I didn't have any discomfort after the operation, and my appetite was particularly good, but there were some things that the doctor told me not to eat for the time being, so there was no feeling of weakness at all, and I joked that the operation was done quietly.

Twelve days later, the doctor had to give me a second stage of surgery. With my first surgery experience, I was visibly relieved and in a better state of mind. The doctor explained to me before the operation that I could be discharged from the hospital after removing the part of my liver that had been eroded by the tumor and observing that there was no problem. After listening, I was very down-to-earth, and when I waited for the patients from the previous operation to come out, I also chatted with my family, saying that I was afraid that I would have to quit drinking in the future.

In three and a half hours, the doctor operated the robot to complete the operation delicately, the bleeding during the operation was particularly small, and the liver with the tumor was separated in the first operation, and this time it was successfully removed.

Later, the doctor told me that my surgery actually filled a gap in China, which was the first case of "ALPPS" surgery reported in China that used robots to complete both operations, and a liver with a diameter of 20 centimeters that was eroded by the tumor was removed from my body by robotic surgery.

As the "first person to eat crabs", there is no precedent in China, but my physical condition is surprisingly good. Being pushed back from the operating room to the ward, I was able to move myself from the push bed to the bed without any help.

After the operation, I recovered well, and my daughter praised me for my determination to see a doctor

The day after the operation, the gastric tube and catheter were all removed, and I was lucky to avoid the difficulty of open surgery. The children also seemed to relax a lot. I am grateful for this post-operative experience, although illness will inevitably cause trouble for the child, but it is better to be less or less.

I don't know if I am old, except for the fear when I was diagnosed at the beginning, after being admitted to the hospital, my mentality was much better. It may also be that the robotic minimally invasive surgery made me suffer a lot less and realize that liver cancer is not so terrible.

The eldest daughter has always praised me, and immediately came to Beijing after being diagnosed, because she had a doctor friend who said that if it dragged on for two more months, the immortals might not be able to save me, after all, the tumor was one centimeter long a week, and if it went on unbridled, it would be a big disaster.

*The content of this article is a popularization of health knowledge and cannot be used as a specific diagnosis and treatment recommendation, nor is it a substitute for face-to-face consultation by a practicing physician, for reference only.

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