I lost blood faster than they could replace it

7:19am Sunday 18th May 2008

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DOCTORS said his next drink would be his last. Phil Cameron woke up in the middle of the night vomiting blood. Confused and delirious, he was taken to the Royal Bournemouth Hospital where relatives were told to expect the worst.

The dad-of-three would not make it through the night with heavy odds stacked against him.

Years of drinking 17 pints a week had finally caught up with the telecommunications analyst and his liver was shutting down in protest.

Unable to process blood fast enough it created a backlog, bursting veins in his throat and flooding his mouth and stomach.

Nurses fed about 12 pints into his deteriorating body but it was no use. The precious liquid was leaking faster than they could keep up.

Soon his heart, without any blood to pump, started giving up the fight and nearest and dearest were informed he had a 90 per cent chance of dying overnight.

"I have no idea how I survived. Maybe it was not my time for the Pearly Gates. I am a stubborn person.My dad said my eyes were filling up with blood and I spent three weeks unconscious."

Emerging from Kings Hospital in London, to which he had been transferred, the 43-year-old was a changed man. Weak and jaundiced, his weight had dropped from 16 stone to 11 stone and his own son struggled to recognise him.

"When I stepped out of the car my youngest son ran to me happily, but my middle one burst into tears. He had failed to recognise me. Looking in the mirror, I hardly recognised myself.

"The consequences of my three or four visits to the pub every week hit home when I went to see my doctor. He said I am glad to see you are alive. We weren't expecting you to make it.' I asked if I had been on the edge of the abyss and he said No, you were at the bottom of the abyss'. I was told that if I had another drink I would die. Giving it up wasn't a problem - I was never an alcoholic."

The Ringwood dad hoped his terrifying story would help put an end to growing numbers of 20-somethings in Southampton showing advanced liver disease.

The "silent killer" takes ten to 15 years to develop and is usually seen in drinkers in their late thirties and early forties. However, Southampton doctors are reporting a worrying emergence of young adults with the disease.

Liver expert Nick Sheron has seen a startling trend developing over his 14 years at Southampton Hospital. He said: "Overall we are twice as busy as we were when I started here. Nationally liver disease and deaths have doubled and I feel it is about the same for Southampton. Fifteen years ago the majority of people coming in with liver disease were in their 50s and 60s. Now they are mainly in their 30s and 40s. We never used to see people in their 20s. Now we are getting three or four a year which means they must have started drinking when they were ten to 13.

"By the time they come in it is often fatal.

They never get the chance to modify their lifestyle."

The disease strikes without warning. By the time symptoms develop it is too late and one in four people die immediately. It is the fifth biggest killer in the UK and the only one of the top five that has been increasing year on year for the last three decades.

Dr Sheron, the creator of Southampton's liver disease screening programme scheduled to begin in June, blamed readily available booze. He wants to see an increase in alcohol taxation, a properly funded screening programme and a widely publicised campaign on the risks of drinking.

He said: "Alcohol is three times as affordable as it was 15 years ago. People tend to spend the same percentage of their income. The obvious solution would be to increase taxation and put it into funding screening programmes so we can pick up on the disease before it becomes fatal."

HadMr Cameron's condition been detected earlier it might have made all the difference.

Instead he is reliant on daily drugs, a monthly GP appointment, visits to a liver consultant and thoracic consultant every other month and quarterly blood tests and scans.

He said: "When you are in your 20s you think you are indestructible.What they don't tell you are the long-term effects. You lose your dignity. You have to be bed-bathed, you lose your libido and the drugs lower your testosterone, making you grow breasts.

Knowing this, it's up to young people to make up their own mind."