MY HCV BATTLE
I am a 27 year old female with Hepatitis C genotype 1B. I contracted the virus as a newborn. I was born 3 1/2 months early and needed multiple blood transfusions. Thankfully they saved my life, unfortunatley I contracted this nasty monster. I was not aware of the Hepatitis until 2006. The virus has been pretty kind to my body so far, however it is now starting to cause problems and do more damage. From what I hear this virus most of the time doesn't cause problems for the first 25-30 years and I'm in that range. My current VL is 2 million 6 hundred twenty thousand. I have a husband of 9 years that does not have the virus and an 8 year old son that also does not have the virus. I work in health care. I do all of the training for our computer program. I also work a second job doing the billing for a doctors office in the evenings.
THE DECISION FOR TREATMENT
I on first thought was not going to jump into treatment, however because of the fact that the virus is starting to do more damage I will be starting the treatment. I was fortunate to be able to get into a study. I will be taking the Ribavirin and Interferon as well as a study drug SCH 503034 by Schering Plough. This medication is a Protease Inhibitor. There are high hopes that adding this drug will drastically improve your chances of clearing the virus. I have a tenative start date of May 14th however I have been going through trying to get started on the treatments since December 06 and have seen about 5 start dates come and go.
MY CONCERNS WITH TREATMENT
As I said earlier I have a husband of 9 years. He is disabled due to some extensive back injuries and 3 back surgeries the third ending with Spinal Meningitis. This makes me working very important for us to survive. My son has epilepsy and this concerns me. He has more problems with the epilepsy when there are changes in the structure of his life. I hope that I can keep things as normal as possible for him. He also has ADHD and requires lots of attention. He normally goes off of his ADHD medication for the summer, however I am thinking of talking with his doctor about what is going on and see if I can leave him on it this summer.
