Liver lesnions, probably benign? Anyone hear of this?

BusynMember

Well-Known Member
I have these, but have to have a sonogram just to make sure. I hate this. I had to have a cyst in my breast sonogrammed once too and I hated it as well. Anyone else hear of benign liver lesions? Are they just being unduly careful? The doctor said the radiologist feels they are benign so why the sonogram?

I am having it on my birthday...lol. What a way to celebrate :)
 

1905

Well-Known Member
I know it's worrisome. My mom had these, they were benign. They can see by the way they are shaped - if they have "fingers", you know growing a blood supply...it may be cancer. If they're smooth and not irregular shaped, most likely benign. They have to check anyway. You want to rule it out. Happy Birthday anyway, when is it?
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Happy Birthday, MWM.

That's scary.

We will be right here, waiting.

Prayers for peace and healing and freedom from fear happening now, as I write.

Cedar
 

susiestar

Roll With It
My mom has an inherited form of liver disease and has scars and lesions on her liver from this. She has to have biopsies done every other year or so. With what you are describing, they should be doing blood tests to check liver function every so often. Be sure to do some research to find out how often this should be done and then make sure the doctor is doing them often enough.

It is VERY possible to have normal liver function and these problems, so normal function does NOT mean your liver is not having problems. It just means the problems are not bad enough to cause diminished function. This is important, because the problems may be able to be treated with medication to keep things from worsening and to help you heal the damage.

PLEASE get copies of your actual bloodwork results, not just the report that says everything is normal. You want the actual levels and the 'normal' range for each test. Then get some graph paper and start graphing the results. You want to go as far back as you can get for your medical records, and you will want to keep up with this for many years, if not the rest of your life.

Graphing these levels is IMPORTANT. Often diagnosing a problem is done by watching the results over a period of time, even if they are all in the normal range. My mother had a friend who got her to do this with all of her lab results. She then took the graphs to each doctor and made them all look at them. One doctor recognized that one liver test went up while another liver test went down over the time span, and that change in levels is what is needed to diagnosis her liver disease. without those graphs, they would have had to wait until something was out of the normal range to diagnosis her, and she would have had severe damage by then. In most cases of her disease, severe damage means start looking for a transplant donor. Instead, she has minimal damage and by making lifestyle changes her liver did something that the docs thought was impossible - her liver actually healed a lot of the damage. She actually made medical journal articles (with-o her name being used, privacy issues and all that), because the accepted knowledge at the time was that the damage was irreversible. My mom followed the Zone diet in a basic way, eating regular small meals/snacks with balanced amounts of protein, carbohydrates and fats (40% carb, 30% protein, 30% fat) and she cut down on stress as much as she could. Over the 2 yrs between her biopsies, her liver improved dramatically, so much that the docs actually did an entire second biopsy procedure to double check because this was thought to be impossible. She has kept up the basic diet ratio, and her liver is doing very well although she does have to take medication daily also.

NONE of this could have happened if she had not tracked her lab results over time. Doctors do NOT do this. They rely on the snapshot view of the lab results, showing what your body is doing right now, rather than using the information more completely by tracking levels on standard tests over time. with today's computers this would be very easy, but doctors just do not do it. They were not trained to do it, they don't really grasp what they are not seeing by not doing this, and given the way they are scheduled so tightly, they don't really have the time to set this up. most docs never even think of using results this way. But if a patient tracks the results on a graph, it gives a clear view of the function over time and can catch problems far sooner. But we have to do this for ourselves because it simply isn't on the radar for most doctors. At least here it is data the docs are unaware of. The software they use may be able to do this, but no one is looking at it if they do.

PLEASE start tracking this. PM if you want help setting up graphs to do this.

I am sorry you have to deal wtih this. Know that the liver can regenerate. It is the only organ that they do partial transplants on. A living donor can give part of his/her liver. In time the donor's liver will grow to normal size. The recipient will get part of a liver, I have heard it is usually 1/3 of a liver, and in time that will grow so the recipient also has a complete liver. This is truly incredible, in my opinion. I looked into this when we learned of my mom's liver disease. I wanted to know all I could.

(((((hugs))))) I am sorry that the last ultrasound was so awful. I hope this one is better.
 
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