Tonsilitis, sex changes and liver failure

So it's been quite the week in our house, I'd no sooner got Freya back to school after Easter than Lucas started being sick, after a few days he began complaining of a sore throat and it wasn't until the screaming started that I began to consider he may have tonsillitis. Lucas being Lucas he wouldn't let me look in his throat so I took him to the dr. Thinking I was doing the right thing I explained what the dr would need to check which of course included looking in his mouth and a tongue depressor and the possibility of some banana medicine. Of course he decided there was no way anyone was looking in his mouth and when she tried to use the tongue depressor to look at his tonsils he started gagging and clapped both hands over his mouth and that was that. She decided he probably did have it anyway due to his other symptoms and prescribed some antibiotics. I knew he wasn't going to take it because he will only take orange nurofen and nothing else so we started mixing it in with his drinks. By this time he was really poorly, he couldn't move, he had a temperature and he was just screaming and screaming about his throat and tummy hurting. He hadn't eaten for 4 days at this point and then he decided that drinking was too painful also, he wouldn't have ice cream or an ice lolly or anything including the orange nurofen. I ended up calling nhs direct because I thought if I can't even get any fluids in him we're going to have to take him to hospital as I couldn't bring his temperature down and he was getting weaker and weaker. One of my older kids had a febrile convulsion at 5 and it was the scariest thing ever and I was terrified Lucas would end up having one. The lady on the phone seemed unconcerned, she suggested I either just pin him down and force the medicine in?! or just let his body fix itself. He's surprisingly strong for a 5 year old and trying to force him to swallow something just resulted in  him vomiting and more screaming about his stomach, you'd think he'd have been too exhausted to fight but it's amazing where we find the strength when we think we're under attack! 
In the end he decided he would try a tiny bit of apple juice so we managed to get some antibiotics in him and he started to perk up.

Then one day last week my daughter told me she wanted a sex change, she is 18, she's always been quite manly, the way she dresses, her mannerisms and since she cut her hair at 16 (her dad forbid it until then?!) she looks like a boy and people that don't know her assume she is. She told me she was gay a few years ago and asked me several times as a child if she was meant to be a boy and I always just said no don't be silly, she's always been angry /aggressive and I know she hasn't felt she fitted in but she also has asd as do I and I know we have a more male way of thinking and I prefer jogging bottoms and big tops because they are more comfy. I have noticed she's been very embarrassed by her boobs since they arrived but again put that down to the fact most girls don't like them when they first get them but that was 5 years ago now. She is very funny about using the ladies toilets but I put that down to other peoples perception of her looking like a boy and people do stare at her. I have another daughter who is gay but she loves her body and doesn't hide it so my daughter can see that being gay doesn't mean your trans. She has been suicidal for over a year but has never told any therapist or me about how she felt. Now she's told me she's already been to the Dr to ask to see someone, she's changed her name and wants top surgery and hormones asap as she feels she's spent long enough in a body she despises,of course the Dr told her it would take several years to which she said she'd rather die. I guess my worries are what if she regrets it? What if she thinks this will make her happy and it doesn't? What if she's confusing feeling male with the autistic thinking and fancying girls? I can't say any of this to her. I've tried so hard to use her new name the last few days and refer to her as him but then he asked me to go and buy him some tampons because he finds it too humiliating, that totally screwed with my head, all the way up to Tesco I was thinking, I'm going to buy tampons for my son! I want to support my child 100% but I've got her dad on my case and what on earth am I going to tell my 80 year old mother who is a strict old fashioned Christian who couldn't accept her being gay?!

On the same day as this transgender revelation Mike went for the results of his recent blood test following on from the scan he had, it turns out he has signs of liver damage. This immediately seemed ridiculous, he has had maybe 2 alcoholic drinks in the 8 years I've known him, he eats no junk what so ever and exercises regularly. He went into panic mode, he says he read somewhere once that people with his condition are more likely to suffer liver problems and most don't live past 50. I have searched and searched the internet and can find no evidence to support this but that said most of the list of problems associated with the condition aren't even mentioned and one went so far as to say they wouldn't have any problems?! He has a letter from his dr at Guys hospital in London from years ago saying it would not get any worse but I found plenty of sources online saying it gets worse with age and he has definitely deteriorated since we've been together. So now he's got to have more tests done :(