Hello Everybody,
I am trying to keep this post as short as possible... (as I am tempted to write a much longer message).
Before the treatment, I was having the impression that people around me barely know about HCV and that I was one of the few unfortunates to have had HCV. So whenever I was with my friends, I preferred to talk as few as possible about HCV. Also my friends were not asking me much about it. Why? Perhaps they knew already that it is a hard to treat disease and .... they felt probably like me - helpless about what can be done to fix Hep C.
I am aware that also on work, many people prefer to keep it extremely private in order to not jeopardize their careers. Some estimates in Romania indicate that 1 out 10 persons has HBV or HCV, yet there aren't much talkings about it. It is crazy to think that if one is working in a company with let's say 100 employees, 10 of them have either HBV or HCV, but they do not know nor share (much) information.
I am pretty sure it is the effect of the stigma. Couple of words about the stigma can be found here - have a look at 2min30sec:
Did something changed after having received the results of UNDETECTED (during and at EOT)? Well, yes, a lot.
For people around me, but for me as well, knowing this result, opened the door of communication. I was so much surprised to see, that almost everybody knows at least one case of a friend / relative / colleague having HCV and hearing that I got treated and reached the UND during treatment was seen (and it is of course) as a miracle, so they do ask me a lot and we talk about the HCV generics.
What I observed is that once the UND result is obtained, people DO talk much easier with me and also for me it is much easier to talk with them.
And even further, I feel I have more trust / confidence that if someday the news about having had HCV will go outside my circle of friends, the possible consequences on my career will not be so high - however I still see risks if such an information will become known.
So ... I feel that the HCV stigma related to my person is not entirely gone, rather it is getting reduced.
To conclude: UNDETECTED is an important milestone in lowering the HCV stigma with regard to my own person.
P.S. you may also imagine the "nice words" being spoken about gilead, patent rights, the legal framework, some doctors, etc .... I doubt I can reproduce it here without risking my user account to be banned
Cheers,
RHF