BA History?

I spent a lot of my time in India asking about our family stories. As I mentioned in my previous post about my dada, my grandparents actually had 8 kids, but only 4 survived. I never really knew what the cause of their deaths, primarily because I don't think anyone in the family really knew what happened. Each kid just got sick, as many kids did at that time, and eventually died.

Well it turns out that my grandparents first child, Pramukh, may have had BA.

No one knows for certain, but he definitely died of liver failure. Put that together with the fact that BA is the most common cause of childhood liver failure and it's not to far fetched to think he may have had BA.

All anyone can remember is that doctors said his liver was failing and that his belly was filling up with fluid. Ascites, we remember you well. Take a look at Jaisal's belly in these pictures - for how scrawny of a kid he was, his belly was quite large since his veins were just leaking fluid from his liver failing. No one can remember if Pramukh was jaundiced, but I know with Jaisal we could only really see it in his eyes. (Brown skin is concealing that way.)  All that they know is that he seemed fine, he got sick, and passed away by age 3. I find the age 3 part telling as well, since nearly all kids with BA die by that age if they don't get medical intervention.

Even if they had known it was BA then, nothing could have been done. The Kasai surgery did not yet exist and even then, as we learned, in many cases liver transplant, which didn't exist for pediatric patients for nearly another 50 years, are still the only option for long-term survival.

Really bizarre stuff considering BA isn't genetic, yet our family may have had 2 occurrences in 3 generations.