Week 19 – Thursday
I am so heartened to see the number of us setting up blogs and sharing the experience of living with hepatitis C and doing the treatment. I have added links this week to blogs started by Steve, Ijaz Ahmed, Nick, Sue and Peter F. It is so useful for each of us individually, for us as peers supporting each other and for those readers who have concerns or issues about Hepatitis C and treatment.
Although I did a quick blog entry yesterday I somehow managed to avoid writing how I was feeling. Well, I wasn’t sure exactly how I was feeling. With hindsight (I am always better at knowing how I feel with hindsight – but getting better at spotting it in the ‘here and now’) I think I was feeling a little blue. Nothing specific I could name. It made me rather nervous. (Is there a precipice beyond which is a big pool of depression and I might find myself slipping in?) Previously on this treatment, I have felt ‘low in energy’ at times without feeling down emotionally at all. But this was ‘down’. It is the first time I have spotted this type of emotion since I have been on treatment. Going to work and getting on with ‘ordinary’ life helped and it soon passed.
Today I am feeling much more on an even keel. Carol has given me a Reiki treatment this morning and I can feel all the chakras and energies back in balance again!
Time to go off to work again soon. While I have spent 5 minutes writing on my blog today I think I have spent the last hour and a half visiting and writing on other blogs! And there are still emails I havent answered. Living with Hepatitis C is certainly a full time occupation!
March 24th, 2005 at 6:34 pm
HI RON, ONE OF MY CUSTOMERS IS INTO REIKI, HE SAYS HE IS GOOD AT IT, HE OFFERED TO DO IT FOR ME. TO BE HONEST I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A BIT TOUNGE IN CHEEK ABOUT IT. DOES IT REALLY WORK?
ALL THE BEST
STEVE
Ron writes: Steve – this is such an interesting question I am doing a blog entry on the topic!
March 26th, 2005 at 2:43 am
I hope your treatment works.I`m a haemophiliac with severe Haemophilia A.I have been waiting over 6 months to see a hepatologist in Glasgow.My doctor said junkies are been seen before Haemophiliacs.My Haemophilia Group Has informed the Health Minister about our shocking treatment.I go out drinking every weekend.i know its wrong but its the only way i cope with chronic Hep C.Had interferon 10 years ago and it never worked.I only drink one night a week but its a lot.
Ron writes: I hope you find justice about your treatment, John. Doctors do seem to say some amazing things (I was told at diagnosis to keep my HepC status secret because of the stigma!) and without any awareness of the impact on people’s lives!! I believe the treatment medications have improved over the past 10 years so I hope you will find a more positive outcome this time around!! Good luck with it.
While everyone (including you, as you point out) knows alcohol is not good for a liver with Hepatitis C there is also an important point about not giving yourself a hard time or stressing yourself out over the issue. Or over having HepC or Haemophilia for that matter. Have you thought of other ways to help you cope/come to terms with it?? I found counselling helped me to express alot of my deeper feelings & fears and made me feel a lot more ‘balanced’ and less reliant on coping mechanisms like drinking. I think a major problem having a dodgy liver is that the things most people do ‘to cope’ (drink, worry, etc) all give the liver a hard time – so the risk is, we end up taking it all out on ourselves (through the impact on our livers)!
I wish you well on your journey – and talk to you again soon I hope
Ron
March 29th, 2005 at 1:24 am
hi ron. the comment by john prior regarding junkies being seen before haemophiliacs has what i consider to be a subtle stigmatising subtext. while i can empathise with john’s situation, and while i don’t want to appear “PC”, the word junkie should be removed from the lexicon altogether. it is the use of words like this that have helped to create the discrimination difficulties all HCV+ people have to deal with. so to john, and to anybody else out there reading this, please use the term IDU (injecting drug user). we, as HCV+ people, need to stop stigmatising each other, first and foremost. no wonder this epidemic which we are all embroiled in is called “the epidemic of difference”. these are differences we must overcome TOGETHER, regardless of how we originally caught the virus.
regards
tom pryce in darwin NT