My husbands lab came back with elevated ammonia and creatinine levels. As a RN, I immediately tested his hands for jerking or flapping. He is positive for jerking his fingers. The labs were run because I reported to the doc his recent hallucinations seeing snakes and 2 car wrecks in 3 weeks he could not explain. Several months ago he was in severe back pain and abused narcotics until we were able to get the pain controlled with steroid spinal injections. Could the abuse of narcotics have caused this...even though he has not had any pain meds in several months? If this is hepatic encephalopathy , can you tell me the average survival time is?