I just thought I'd post something about Hepatitis C (HCV) A lot of people in my age group are walking around with this and don't realize it. It is a silent disease that doesn't become symptomatic until the damage is done. Mainly to your Liver. There are several genotypes or sub-types. HCV 1A is the most virulent and hardest to treat strain. HCV 1B is next. Some strains are more prevalent in certain other areas One is an Egyptian strain. Another is most commonly found in Japan or Asia. People think that you have to be a needle freak to get it. That's far from the truth. Some of the latest info coming out of the Center For Disease Control is saying that one of the most common routes is from nasal inhalation of cocaine or speed. Mainly cocaine. And the transmission medium is the straw. Anyone who ever got into snorting coke knows how it tears up the inside of the nasal passageway and can cause nose bleeds. Well that straw or dollar bill rolled up that the guy with the nose bleed just used and handed to you? It may as well be a used syringe. It is sexually transmitted but conditions have to be perfect for transmission. An infected mother will pass it on less than 5% of the time to her baby at birth. I was diagnosed with genotype 1B in 1992 when the first specific test for it was released. I found out by accident when giving blood. I got a card from Red Cross telling me my liver enzymes ALT and AST were highly elevated. The doctors couldn't say how long I had had it, but that I had about 5 years left on my liver. Well screw them. Here it is 13 years later and I'm still kickin'. I tried three different treatments over the next 10 years. Interferon Alpha 1A for 6 months. That didn't work. The friggin' doctors didn't know squat.The disease produces fatigue before the jaundice. One doctor gave me a script for vitamin pills to treat the fatigue. Other doctors doing research found out that certain ingredients in different types of interferon were showing a little improvement. So they combined the best of all of them and called it Consensus Interferon. I took that for 6 months at 3 times the normal dosage. 1 shot every day at $75 per shot. Drugs are beyond my financial reach so I was thankful I was being a guinea pig and getting the drug for free. That one didn't work either. No improvement after 6 months. So I went in search of another study and found one called Halt-C being funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) It was being carried out in Universities all around the country. I was at USC L.A. County General. A biopsy showed I had cirrhosis, and I was doing combo therapy. The name for the two drug treatment is called Ribatrol. I was injecting a new kind of Interferon called Pegalated or Peg Interferon, while simultaneously taking a very powerful anti-viral drug called Ribavirin. 900mgs in the morning 900mgs at night. And one shot of the Peg each week instead of daily. The Peg was about the same price as the consensus $75, but being a time release only needing it once a week is better if you are buying. The Ribavirin is about $900 for a 30 day supply at the dosages I was using. How can someone afford to pay that? After 6 months, my liver enzymes had normalized. At 9 months I had no detectable viral levels in my blood. That was in 2001. I'm still at non detectable levels and my liver is starting to heal itself. Of course as a result of all this I've had to give up my herb, and I have been celibate since I was first diagnosed. Now that is some fucked up shit there. I love the ladies. What can I say. But there is always the chance it may just be hiding and can come out. The disease is like a looter in New Orleans. It's out there partying on your liver, and as soon as it sees the cops (drugs) it runs and hides. When it's all clear it comes out again. I couldn't live with myself if I gave that shit to another person. So that is the price I must pay for the follies of my youth. I'm not writing this to elicit any sympathy. I don't need it. It is just important that people who have it have some hope that they can get rid of it. There is nothing out yet that kills it in everyone. I was lucky. And the drugs have some side effects. More so in some than others. I had to have psych evals and cognitive testing while in the study. And had to answer crap about my moods. They say some people get suicidal, and some have bad body pain.All I had was some flu like symptoms that went away the 2nd week. My hair thinned out, but it's all grown back as thick as ever. The real message here is, if you participated in any of the risky behavior that I described, snorting or shooting, get a liver check up. That's the only way to know and it's better found sooner than later. Hope this helped someone. SEE YA!!!!!!!!!!!!
