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thought that if I share my experiences with doing the Combination treatment. It might help some others that are contemplating treatment. Although near the end, (five months into it) I could not wait for the treatment to finish, overall I found that it could be tolerated. Mind you, after having said that, my course of treatment was only six months (having genotype 3A). I somehow feel that it may have more to do with the length of time that one expects to be on treatment rather than the actual time itself. Of course, that’s just a feeling. The first four to six weeks were very much like a severe flu. I felt that perhaps I had picked up a flu virus as well but maybe it was just the Interferon. After those symptoms died down a bit there were other less debilitating ones like the soft tissue inside my nose became very dry and there was always blood present when I blew my nose. I had probably lost about 5 kilos in weight as well and I had a horrible itchy skin, which was cleared up after applying a cream prescribed by my GP. Probably the most concerning symptom for me was the brain fog or short term memory loss, I found that whilst talking to people all of a sudden it felt like all thoughts would just drop out of my head and I couldn’t remember what the conversation was about. People would notice this blank, confused look and fortunately realised what was going on. That symptom actually got more intense and actually took some time to dissipate even after ceasing the treatment. The Ribavirin capsules which I took daily (I think it was three in the morning and two at night although it could have been the other way around, it is a little bit difficult recalling it now as it all seems a bit hazy looking back on it) have symptoms of their own too, they lower your haemoglobin and red cell count making you anaemic which has the symptom of making you feel short of breath and a little bit weak. This symptom is not as bad as it sounds and my GP told me that the only time this would become a serious problem would be if the haemoglobin dropped very suddenly and that one cannot get the
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levels back up with iron etc., as the anaemia is drug induced. The actual injecting of the Interferon wasn’t really the drama that I thought it would be. The drug comes in these neat little ready pens, which you dial up the dose at the bottom of the pen, attach the tiniest needle to the other end and just find a roll of skin around the tummy area and just pierce the skin (which sounds awful but really isn’t that bad). This gets a bit more difficult near the end of treatment as there seemed to be a bit less of a spare tyre as I lost weight. Once the needle is in it’s just a matter of pressing down the end of the pen, which clicks as it goes down. I probably should mention that near the end (fifth or sixth month), I felt that there was a bit of a psychological aversion to putting the needle in, as I knew what the side effects would be like. My hair was also thinning somewhat and that was a bit of a concern. I persevered anyway and I am glad that I did. By the way, the hair does grow back after a few months of ceasing treatment. I found that at the end of the fortnight, which is how long the ready pen lasts, there was always some leftover Interferon. This seemed like a terrible waste and because I wanted to give myself the best chance of success, I started to dial up a bit extra each time. This brought the dose up to about three and a half million units, which my specialist thought that was probably a reasonable tactic, (more is better, he said). Having said that though, that would be an individual choice depending on how severely you experienced side-effects. Check with your specialist first. The most encouraging sign for me to follow through with it all was that the blood results after the first month were good. My ALTs had dropped from always being around the 200 mark to 15, which helped me to feel that it was actually working. They stayed around 15 for the whole six months of treatment and now hover around 25 that I have cleared the virus.
Hepatitis C Community News
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Issue 21