Living Without HepC

I mentioned on the weekend that I have been getting a lot of spam containing viruses recently – purportedly coming from ronmetcalfe.com – yah, like I’m sending myself emails …

I have just been deleting them – and of course not opening the attachments – which contain the virus.

This week I have had emails ‘returned’ to me that were sent to New School University in Greenwich Village New York – marked as contaminated and not accepted by that institution’s anti-virus software. I had never heard of this university and have not ever emailed them.

So, these spammers are not only sending emails from me to me but also to other places too.

Today it occurs to me I should be warning those that read this blog about this – as these spam virus-laden emails could be going anywhere – including your computer.

These are a few samples of the type of wording they are using.

From: webmaster @ronmetcalfe.com [mailto:webmaster @ronmetcalfe.com]
Sent: 14 June 2005 11:27
To: tom @ronmetcalfe.com
Subject: Your password has been successfully updated
Dear user tom,
You have successfully updated the password of your Ronmetcalfe account.
If you did not authorize this change or if you need assistance with your account, please contact Ronmetcalfe customer service at: webmaster @ronmetcalfe.com
Thank you for using Ronmetcalfe!
The Ronmetcalfe Support Team
+++ Attachment: No Virus (Clean)
+++ Ronmetcalfe Antivirus – www .ronmetcalfe.com

From: register @ronmetcalfe.com [mailto:register @ronmetcalfe.com]
Sent: 14 June 2005 10:46
To: jose @ronmetcalfe.com
Subject: Members Support
Dear Ronmetcalfe Member,
Your e-mail account was used to send a huge amount of unsolicited spam messages during the recent week. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and confirm the attached document so you will not run into any future problems with the online service.
If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to cancel your membership.
Virtually yours,
The Ronmetcalfe Support Team
+++ Attachment: No Virus found
+++ Ronmetcalfe Antivirus – www. ronmetcalfe.com

From: info @ronmetcalfe.com [mailto:info @ronmetcalfe.com]
Sent: 14 June 2005 10:46
To: james @ronmetcalfe.com
Subject: Members Support
Dear user james,
It has come to our attention that your Ronmetcalfe User Profile ( x ) records are out of date. For further details see the attached document.
Thank you for using Ronmetcalfe!
The Ronmetcalfe Support Team
+++ Attachment: No Virus (Clean)
+++ Ronmetcalfe Antivirus – www. ronmetcalfe.com

You can see they are slightly ‘off’ – ‘The Ronmetcalfe Support Team’ or ‘Thank you for using Ronmetcalfe’. So this should make you suspicious! Of course if you reply to that address I suspect that automatically confirms your address as a ‘live account’ – and fair game to go on a spammers address list (and no doubt sold on as well to other spammers).

Please be aware I will not send anyone an email with an attachment. In the rare instance where I do – we will have discussed it first so you will know to expect it.

I will also only send out emails which are address to you personally with your name, or nickname, on them.

I would not ask anyone to fill out documents about your Forum membership, etc – without posting such information on the Forum first – again you would know to expect it.Nor would I threaten I have “no choice” but to close your account.

(As I write this four more such emails have come into my Inbox)

Ben and I are talking about ways to diminish these spam emails – and will be making some changes to alleviate my problem soon – but I think it fair to point out this nasty trend in case something finds it’s way to your computer – looking like it has come from my domain.

Enough of the cutesy ‘grumpy’ label – I feel damned irritable. I feel like a walking bundle of irritation which can be set off by almost anything.

In the past two days these are the things which made me almost apoplectic:
▪ Because I have had over 2 dozen emails this week containing viruses – all addressed from names like admin@ronmetcalfe.com, accounts@ron metcalfe.com, register@ronmetcalfe.com, I ignored a number from bandwidth@ronmetcalfe.com. The latter were genuine – warning me I was about to exceed my bandwidth allowance on my account. So the site went down for a bit yesterday until my internet host server (Ben) sorted it out for me. Spammers are perverse sickies.
▪ A neighbour is installing a new shed of some sort – the roof of which is higher than the fence and spoils our otherwise completely uninterrupted view of garden and neighbourhood trees from our breakfast room window.
▪ I returned a bunch of flowers I bought from M&S because two had completely blossomed and blown while the rest remained as unopened buds
▪ The M&S staff was very friendly and polite – immediately inviting me to select any bunch of flowers from the display as a replacement while she went to get my money back; no opportunity to complain there then.
▪ Also while I was out, I returned a food item to Holland & Barrett which had been sold with an expired sell by date; they told me it wasn’t out of date – the date stamp said 06 not 05. When I said ’so you’re telling me I’m wrong’; ‘yes’. I did rant and left the shop saying I wouldn’t return – ‘that’s your prerogative’.
▪ Sainsbury didn’t have any Danish pastries today
▪ The checkout till wouldn’t process my purchases to produce a transaction slip for me to sign; after five minutes waiting I was sent to Customer Services – who said oh you need a bypass on this card don’t you. I don’t need a bypass – your computer system does.
▪ Sainsbury staff told me, yet again, I would have to use a PIN number (rather than sign) for purchases on my card ‘in a few weeks’. I know it will not become mandatory to use a PIN number until December 2005.
▪ I saw a family friend as I was leaving Sainsbury – he sociably enough wanted to chat about ‘the kids and the family’; I was so irritated already I had to really curtail the urge to say piss off but managed to cut short the conversation as quickly as possible. (Well he hadn’t done anything so I felt he didn’t deserve a share of my feelings)
▪ London Underground has sent round a letter telling us about refurbishment to our local tube station – reassuring us services won’t be interrupted – some works will be carried out between 1 and 5 am. I decided this is a subtle way of fore-warning us there will be construction noise in the middle of the night. I rang the Information number given in the letter – a call centre of course. She immediately wanted to know my telephone number, my name, my initials. I hung up. I called her to ask a question and she asked me three questions before I could get anywhere. I also suspect the questions were preparation for telling me she didn’t know the answer – speak to someone else or someone will call me. Meanwhile the stats get racked up showing good customer service and responsiveness to customer concerns.

Carol and I went for a leisurely enjoyable walk this morning in a country park near to us. Through tall forest trees and around a lake where kids were taking canoeing lessons, enthusiasts were running remote control boats, and the wildlife sanctuary at the other end of the lake had yellow water lilies in bloom and families of ducks, moor hens and Canada geese swimming about. The sun was shining and warm. The shade in the forest was cool and calm.

This afternoon it is overcast, gloomy and cooler – like a different day. I am too irritated to be bothered – or perhaps to dare, go to yoga class today. Too much potential for more apoplexy. I am liking Paul’s idea of cocooning myself in bed and watching videos. Damn it – we don’t usually watch TV in bed any more so the video in our bedroom isn’t wired up or set up at the moment – and I don’t have any videos to watch – except the TV programme about the woman with multiple personality disorders and I am not in the mood for that. No one gets to be worse off than me today.

I read the comments on my last post about being grumpy. I found them supportive and kind to me. Letting rip at appropriate times, ‘letting go’ of emotions, catharsis, visualisations, morphing or metabolising feelings – all are part of my repertoire and regular practices. They have helped me this week – and maybe I need to do more. I suppose my point about all this is what Sue commented on – the heightened emotionality I am experiencing.

When I look at my ‘irritable list’, none of these items (or all of them together for that matter) would ordinarily upset my sense of equilibrium. I would process my emotions over each item and move on. But my reactions are so big to things so small. I can’t keep up. That is what is both interesting and surprising to me (well, shocking actually). And so difficult to work through as there is so much raging. And leaves me wondering – is there more and more of this to come over the last part of this treatment?

Over the past few days I am aware of feeling rather ‘grumpy’ about anything, and everything, very quickly.

And I was involved in a brief disagreement with a colleague at work which left me feeling very emotional afterwards. Fortunately I hadn’t said anything which I regret – or very much of anything at all – I think the other person had more issues than I and was the more verbal. I don’t want to go into more detail here about our interchange – but I was left holding a lot of raging feelings.

I am so struck how emotionally I reacted and how very angry I was – over something which was relatively minor and resolvable. At several points that evening I was certain I would have to walk out and come home – I just didn’t know where to put myself I was that angry. Because I knew there would be formal implications to walking out I managed to hang on through the rest of the shift. I was pre-occupied with how angry and outraged I was feeling for most of two days. As the matter has not been resolved between us as colleagues I still have a feeling of carrying around ‘unfinished business’. My own counselling therapy yesterday was very useful in letting some of this go and helping me to find a more even balance about it all.

With hindsight I am pleased I didn’t ‘let rip’ and give vent to this rage as I am sure I would have caused a BIG scene and found it very hard to justify as acceptable ‘work environment’ behaviour afterwards. Riba-rage is something people on treatment know about and understand – but the rest of the world is a different matter and we have to live in that world too.

Along with this I have noticed how my ribavirin tablets are feeling very heavy on my stomach after I take them – making me uncomfortable as they are ingested into my system with gurgling and knotting. A new experience.

I have had a relaxing massage from Carol this morning and feel like a restful snooze at the moment – but it is time to get ready to go off to work for the evening, so no such luck – damn it. See, I said I feel grumpy.

Thanks to Carol and Martin for sending me information about new blogs – spotted as Links on some of the blogs already.

Elizabeth Anne is in British Columbia in Canada and Viralloader in Darwin Australia. Debbiejo is in Arizona USA. Links on all 3 now can be seen in the sidebar to the right of this column. I will point out that Debbiejo’s site brings pop-ups – perhaps I am just a bit weary of spams, mass hits from advertising and porno sites but I’m not too keen on coping with pop-up advertising too.

Good to see more people sharing their experience of Hepatitis C – each of us has a unique story and history of living with this virus that can be useful for others to read about, as well as beneficial for us to write about.

PS – after emailing Viralloader to confirm he is not yet quite ready to launch, I am following his request and removing the Link to his blog – only for the moment, I hope

Today has been a completely different day. I think writing about my experience yesterday helped me clear my frustrations and let them go … and the comments from fellow bloggers felt very supportive.

Just completed injection #31 – only 17 more to go (makes October somehow sound closer, put this way).

And I have begun an oil painting – the first in about 40 years. In recent years I have been exploring watercolours but I decided recently it was time to get out the set of oil paints I was given at my last birthday and give them a try. Took the best part of the afternoon to prepare and make a beginning – but the canvas is completely covered with the first layer of paint. Don’t think I am yet ready for membership of the Royal Academy but I consider it an achievement (regardless of what it looks like).

Pottering about … and enjoying it.