By Michaela Gordoni
At a young age, actress Bellamy Young had to care for her father while he dealt with overt hepatic encephalopathy (OHE), which is a decline in brain function caused by severe liver disease.
“My dad’s overt hepatic encephalopathy was born out of his drinking, and his initial diagnosis was cirrhosis,” said Young, who won a Teddy Bear Award® for her role in THE WALTONS THANKSGIVING.
“Drinking was always a part of my childhood. Once we got the cirrhosis diagnosis, we were very ashamed of it — we came home, closed the door and didn’t talk about it,” she told Parade.
Her family didn’t know that his liver condition could affect his brain function and personality.
She and her mother began to see a “very different dad,” she recalled. “Now I can look back and separate the man from the disease, but then I was young and I didn’t know what was happening.”
As a teenager, she didn’t understand why her dad behaved oddly.
“He had become combative at work, he would forget to pick me up at school and his breath would smell different. He had that hand flap, which I now know is very textbook OHE,” she recalled.
They finally got more help when her father couldn’t get home from work — his place of employment for decades.
Related: Bellamy Young, THE WALTONS: HOMECOMING, SUPERMAN AND LOIS Take Home Top Movieguide® Honors
She said, “When we went back to the doctor, they said this is now overt hepatic encephalopathy. At that point, it was very, very progressed.”
Young spreads awareness for the disease so that other families can spot signs early on. Some of the signs also present like Alzheimer’s and other diseases.
“My mom and I had no idea that liver disease could be chronic and progressive — we didn’t know we could go into a different chapter of his disease process,” Young said.
They would have taken him to a doctor much sooner if they had known.
“I talk about it, even though it makes me sad, so that nobody else feels alone —and so that anyone whose loved one is diagnosed with a chronic and progressive liver disease knows this is something that mig ht happen, and can catch it early,” she said. “I’m someone who very much believes knowledge is power, and usually once I know something, I can lock in and move forward, But this was really heartbreaking, because it was so progressed by the time we got there.”
Her father was 53 when he got the OHE diagnosis and passed away just two years later, Healthline reported. Young was 15 at the time.
As a teenager, she was her father’s caregiver. She says she was her “worst human self” as a teen.
“I wasn’t happy to do it. I was really miserable,” she admitted. “I didn’t have people over. There was a hospital bed in the living room. As a teenager, that’s so embarrassing.”
Her mom handled his meds and appointments while Young dealt with the day-to-day.
“That’s an embarrassing thing to admit, but the resentment of wanting to live your life too,” Young said. “A sickness takes precedent and love wins out, and I wouldn’t give anything for the time I did have with my dad. But it took me years to recover from that [role].”
“I was so mean to him and it still haunts me,” she previously told PEOPLE. I have regrets for days. But all that sort of bad action comes out of fear and ignorance and thank heavens there’s more information on HE and nobody has to feel that alone or confused or afraid anymore.”
Young currently partners with Salix Pharmaceuticals to promote a medication that can reduce the risk of OHE.
She said, “I’m so grateful to have partnered with Salix to start talking about these things, because this happens to so many people and no one’s talking about it.”
Read Next: A WALTONS THANKSGIVING’s Bellamy Young Says Movie Teaches ‘Love and Kindness’
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