I never expected to write any of this.

I went into the hospital in December 2018. I was in liver failure, and by the time they were done, my chart said advanced liver disease, alcohol-associated liver disease, sepsis, and cirrhosis. What I had was called end-stage liver disease then.

Nobody sat my mother down and said it out loud. She told me later that she read it off their faces. The way they looked at her said your daughter is likely not going to make it, and she carried that by herself. I think she softened it even when she finally told me.

I want to be plain about that part, because a lot of what gets written for people with cirrhosis skips straight to the recipes. This is serious, and I am not going to tell you otherwise.

What I will tell you is that I was not scared. I think I was too sick to be scared. What I had instead was a knowing that there was something I was supposed to do, and that I needed to find out what it was and go do it.

If you are there right now, I have been there too. And there absolutely is hope.

We are not statistics. We are people.

The salt

I knew they were going to tell me no more alcohol. I was ready for that one.

I was not ready for the doctor to say, Emily, you have to remove salt from your diet.

It was like he said it in slow motion. I wanted him to never have said it. But he said it, and I knew right then that my life was changed forever.

I did not know yet how good that change was going to be.

My body was holding fluid. Ascites, edema, swelling that pushed up into my breathing space. The puffy Play-Doh feet and the oatmeal canister ankles were not random. Neither were the yellow eyes, the thinning hair, the bruising or the itching. The fluid was sodium and water doing exactly what sodium and water do. That was why he said it. What I was to live on instead was the sodium that occurs naturally in food.

I was devastated. I genuinely thought food was over for me. I used to put salt on my lemons.

And then, while I was possibly a little stubborn about it, I decided to get really creative instead. The first thing I reached for was vinegar, because it satisfied something I was missing from the salt. After that I went looking everywhere. Citrus zest. Ginger. Peppers, especially the hot ones. Mustard powder. Nutritional yeast. I like extreme flavors, and I decided I was going to find flavor everywhere I could.

Every one of those was me walking around my kitchen going, well, let’s see what this does.

It turns out food was not over. Food got more interesting, and a lot more exciting. I make my own mustard now. I pickle habaneros. I make a mother batch of Embrobi soup that lasts me about three weeks, and most nights there is an Embrobi salad and a bowl of it on my table. That is my actual life, and my life is delicious.

In the summer of 2026 I called that doctor. I thanked him for the words I never wanted to hear, and I told him I am doing great.

He did take the salt away. But he told me I would get the sodium I needed from the food itself, from what occurs naturally in it. He gave me a number as well, and it was a small one. Years of living it have shown me he was not far off. What he was really pointing me toward was real food.

And here is what I found underneath all of it. I found out what is nourishing and what is good for us, and I decided to make those things taste delicious. They are helping us and they taste good, so that is a win all the way around. I eat intentionally now, and the flavor is amazing, better than any food I used to eat before all of this.

Giving my body food that helps it is such a blessing.

Where I am now

My MELD went from 28 to 7. I never needed a transplant.

If that number does not mean anything to you yet, it did not mean anything to me either at the start. The MELD scale runs from 6 to 40, and lower is better. Six is the floor. So a 7 is close to the best it goes.

And I feel good. That is the part I most want you to hear, because it does not happen on its own. When I eat the way this body was designed to be fed, I feel good. That is the whole key, and it is the reason for everything else on this site. GOD designed our bodies and HE designed the food for them, and when we give them what HE made for them, there is so much less stress on them. So much less work for our livers.

I live with cirrhosis. But my blood work is great, and I like to say I am thriving with cirrhosis. People think that is a bit of an odd thing to say. It is true, though.

And this is what it looks like. Joyfully creating flavorful dishes in my own kitchen, in Florida, with a garden outside and sprouts on the counter and jars of things I pickled, labeled with labels I made myself. I smile a lot. It is the joy of JESUS in me, reflecting out.

Jason, my dear fiancé, walks this road alongside me. We both keep raw ginger on us, and when we share a piece we ask GOD to bless it and thank HIM for putting a flavor that strong and that good for us inside one small root. He knows what I can eat, and that is a bigger gift than it sounds. If we are cooking, he buys organic. If we are going out, he picks somewhere I can actually eat. I can ask the questions myself, and I do, but it is a very good thing to have someone on your team who asks them too. I thank GOD for my teammate and husband-to-be.

I cannot promise you my outcome. Nobody can promise anybody that. But I was told there was no hope, and that was not true for me, and it is worth knowing that outliers exist. I am one, and I pray that you are one too.

I am rooting for you. And I am so glad you are here.

Come along with me

Recipes, what I am learning, every new exciting thing I find, and the moment the YouTube channel goes live, the community opens, or the book is ready. I would love to have YOU here for it.

May you be blessed with the knowing that the impossible part of your story is the part GOD is already working on.

Prayers, blessings and broccoli sprouts, 💛✝️🥦🤗
Emily