Portal Hypertension

As I lay here with side pain tonight, I thought I might educate you all on portal hypertension. Portal Hypertension is when you have high blood pressure in your portal vein, which is located in your abdomen starting at the liver. It’s a large vein connecting from your liver to the spleen, pancreas, stomach, large and small intestines. The liver has all the transporting blood pump through it and cleanses it in the process. Portal hypertension is not something that can truly be cured, it more or less can be maintained. Due to the fact that cirrhosis of the liver is the leading cause of portal hypertension, liver transplantation is the only effective cure for both. The biggest concern for portal hypertension is bleeding of the varices, hence the reason I undergo an upper endoscopy every 1-3years. Obviously all of these things worsen over time which is a sign of end-stage liver disease. That’s why we monitor both my routine labs once a month and do CT scans every 3 months. They help determine my MELD (Model for End-Stage Liver Disease) score for my placement on the transplant list. My pain is something I’m aware of and is just one of my many side affects. I get my next CT scan in a week and let’s hope everything is “Tori stable”. In a typical Tori fashion I will say simply this, my pain is not worth complaining about but educating people about!