TREATMENT

Before the treatment was due to start I was given information about the two drugs I would be taking. Apparently different patients react to these drugs in different ways, and the type of reaction could be affected by how fit you were, how long you’d had Hepatitis C and how much damage had already been done to your liver because of it. Reading the list of potential side effects didn’t inspire me with optimism for the process. Unless of course you fancied the odd bit of fatigue, a few headaches, some flu like fever, nausea, anorexia, diarrhoea, depression, irritability, insomnia, itching, rashes, alopecia, coughing or anaemia. Not a course one would happily embark upon unless there was no option, but without treatment Hepatitis C can end in liver failure and death. If your heart, lungs or kidneys fail, modern equipment and medicine can take over to replicate those organs function while the problem is alleviated or repaired. In these cases the doctors can use a heart pump, lung respirator or dialysis for the kidneys. But nothing can take over from the liver. If you have a problem, you fix it or die. This makes your liver a unique organ and worth looking after.

By Sept 2010 I’d been feeling poorly for so long it was a no brainer for me to accept the treatment. Duly on Sept 21st 2010 we arrived at the hospital and were shown how to inject one of medicines while the other should be taken orally, and these new drugs were to be taken alongside my normal daily medication to control all the other complications I had related to Hepatitis C, which already had their own list of side effects. Fortunately the strongest one was only an injection once a week. But within 24 -36 hours of taking it I would feel much worse. The nausea, anorexia and headaches could double in intensity and my head felt like it was away with the fairies.

Other sufferers I subsequently met referred to one of these drugs as ‘Interference’, because it scrambled your brain. When you’re feeling nauseous, depressed and fatigued, you’re not sleeping; you’re itching, anaemic, full of a cold and have diarrhoea, then the last piece in the side effects compendium…. irritability can understandably sometimes manifest itself as rage, and this was felt by many sufferers I later met. Personally I never felt depressed and my own irritability never progressed to real rage, but the rest of it was all there. This programme of treatment was to last for 48 weeks, which made it feel like I was standing on a shore looking way beyond to a horizon still one year away and knowing I would be feeling this crap all the way through it. The prospect was outrageously daunting, but I accepted the price as one to be paid if I wanted to get better, and I desperately did. So I just focussed on the future. A future with me still in it and returned to health, playing an active and healthy part in it.