No Regrets
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OK. So I chose to abort treatment after 40 weeks because of failing to achieve a negative viral response. Do I have any regrets?
No. None at all.
I don’t regret starting treatment because for me it was the right choice.
Given all the circumstances all over again I would do the same.
It was always a gamble. I was never offered more than a 50 – 65% chance of success.
My choice was based on my age, 50, the fact that I had probably had the virus for 30 years and the fact that I was getting symptoms that something was wrong in the liver department.
Also, I was in a position career wise to take a year out to do the course.
I made the right choice. It just didn’t work out.
I have already decided that I won’t do combination therapy again. Full stop.
Again, I have looked at all the facts, weighed them up and decided not to do another course.
I will wait till some new treatment comes along in about 5 – 8 years. New treatments are being tested all the time and they are looking at fewer side effects and shorter treatment times.
Even just 3 months for a Geno 1 is being touted as a real possibility.
Meanwhile I will live with the virus. This is something an estimated half a million people are doing anyway – most without knowing it.
After post treatment recovery (about 6 months minimum) I will get into some fitness stuff. I am already “Doing Herbs” which are a lot easier on the body than combo. Although they can never kill off the virus they can help the liver to cope with other toxins more efficiently and so give itself a chance to cope with the virus and perhaps limit its damage.
Treatment is not easy and 12 months is a long, long time if you happen to be one of those who get maximum sides.
No one has it easy. That’s impossible when you are injecting yourself with regular overdoses of interferon and taking tablets that fundamentally alter your bodies RNA.
There must be damage. That’s inevitable.
Towards the end of TX I felt my body being ravaged viciously by the chemicals.
It wasn’t nice. It was a violation.
I did it - we all do it – to achieve an end. In my case it didn’t work.
But I can never regret doing it. Not ever.
******************************************************************************
OK. So I chose to abort treatment after 40 weeks because of failing to achieve a negative viral response. Do I have any regrets?
No. None at all.
I don’t regret starting treatment because for me it was the right choice.
Given all the circumstances all over again I would do the same.
It was always a gamble. I was never offered more than a 50 – 65% chance of success.
My choice was based on my age, 50, the fact that I had probably had the virus for 30 years and the fact that I was getting symptoms that something was wrong in the liver department.
Also, I was in a position career wise to take a year out to do the course.
I made the right choice. It just didn’t work out.
I have already decided that I won’t do combination therapy again. Full stop.
Again, I have looked at all the facts, weighed them up and decided not to do another course.
I will wait till some new treatment comes along in about 5 – 8 years. New treatments are being tested all the time and they are looking at fewer side effects and shorter treatment times.
Even just 3 months for a Geno 1 is being touted as a real possibility.
Meanwhile I will live with the virus. This is something an estimated half a million people are doing anyway – most without knowing it.
After post treatment recovery (about 6 months minimum) I will get into some fitness stuff. I am already “Doing Herbs” which are a lot easier on the body than combo. Although they can never kill off the virus they can help the liver to cope with other toxins more efficiently and so give itself a chance to cope with the virus and perhaps limit its damage.
Treatment is not easy and 12 months is a long, long time if you happen to be one of those who get maximum sides.
No one has it easy. That’s impossible when you are injecting yourself with regular overdoses of interferon and taking tablets that fundamentally alter your bodies RNA.
There must be damage. That’s inevitable.
Towards the end of TX I felt my body being ravaged viciously by the chemicals.
It wasn’t nice. It was a violation.
I did it - we all do it – to achieve an end. In my case it didn’t work.
But I can never regret doing it. Not ever.
******************************************************************************
posted by Paul | 6:44 PM
5 Comments:
As Ursula LeGuin quoted.
'It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.'
I'm proud of how you have come through this. Your little girl,
I'm sorry to hear your trial with interferon did not have the hoped for results. Interferon treatment is a rough road. I've had a co-worker who went throught tx successfully tell me that if she had to do it again she would not even though she did acheive a negative viral response. She was emphatic that she would not make the same choice again because the effects of the interferon and ribavirin were so ravaging.
It's great to see you so positive and still hopeful for the future. I too, am one who has decided to forego the current comination therapy. There are also many doctors, despite the popular perceptions, who feel that the current accepted treatment for Hep C is not the wisest choice. Dr. Andrew Weil in Phoenix, AZ and Dr. Zhang in NYC are two prominent examples.
Wishing you and yours the best in the upcoming year.
Allan
Paul,
I have to say that I agree with the above post. I wouldn't do treatment again, nor would I recommend it. It's a hard stance to take because I have an SVR BUT like I said to you in email I believe that there are many ways to keep the viral damage at bay. If we took everyone out of the damaging food/medicine chain we have become emeshed in, and drastically restricted our exposure to doctors our morbidity/mortality rate would drop exponentially. Get yourself healthy, it may take a while but you will get there.
nadine
Hi Paul
You gave it your best shot and you have perhaps secured benefits in terms of liver protection, so it was not a totally wasted exercise, even though we know svr is the preferred end result.
I wish I had heard more about abstainers before I took the tx route. Saying that I probably still would have gone for tx. Like you say everybody's doing it. Isn't that a song?
All the best for 2006 to you and your good wife Sarah.
Miss Poppy
Hi Paul,
Back in October 05 I visited the site for the first time and posted a comment to Ron, which you kindly replied to with your Bill Gates comment - which made me laugh! I was at wk 27,you 37 and little did we know then but we were both about to be hit with an oncoming train. I had a PCR by default at 24wks, I now wonder whether it would have shown up otherwise. I continued up to 32wks in the hope it would reverse alas, to no avail. This was my second attempt in five years (geno 1). First time I remained negative throughout the 48wks and even started to feel well towards the end. This time the
I had felt suddenly bombarded with whole range of symptoms. I have since been informed that if the virus bounces back the load is usually high initially and then settles down and not misread it as reversing again to a negative result. It's both disappointing and a relief to be off tx. Sometimes I wish I'd never been diagnosed bodybags and all that stuff, no end to it.
Anyway, I have decided to live in the here and now, enough of putting my life on hold. So I'm going to make the most of things and if something less invasive comes along, with a higher success rate I will go for it.
Very best wishes for 2006. Loll
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