TOPIC:

How some innocent people become infected with HCV.
In 1970 I was involved in a major road accident & was give multiple blood transfussions.
I remained in hospital for about 3 months recovering from my injuries .
When discharged & healthy enough, I became a very regular blood donor.
I attended the blood bank every 3 months to donate whole blood until 1990.
That ment I had completed 80 donations over a 20 year period.
In 1990 I was asked by the Red Cross Blood Bank to attend an appointment.
At this meeting I was informed that they were able to test blood donors for the Hepititis C Virus & my sample had come back positive.
This was shattering news & straight away my first thoughts were for all those infected donations that may have been used over the past 20 years.
Back in 1990, if you had HCV you were a intravenous drug user.
So the only people you told about your HCV was immediate family.
I have secretly lived with this virus, in fear of people branding you as being a junkie.
I've worked in the health area for 50 years.
I'm now retired & on treatment.
At 66 I'm hoping to clear this virus that I've been living with for the past 45 years.

Innocent people? So us junkies are guilty people? I see you know nothing about addiction. In your ignorance I'll leave it alone. I know you meant no harm. Doesn't matter how anybody got it.

Welcome Michael and thanks for sharing your story. This so true regarding the stigma around this virus and even in 2016, the general public perception is still negative and misled.
My mother and brother live in another state and he, like me, has HCV, G3a, for 35+ years, but he has cirrhosis and is waiting to see the Specialist after March to go on Tx. I went through GP2U with Dr James Freeman and started Sof/Dac last month - 16 weeks Tx - I'm in week 4.
She hasn't really told many people and my brother won't tell anyone because she was telling me how negative everyone was being - 'he's a drug addict and deserves it! Why should the Gov pay for people with this virus to get Tx when they could spend the money on more 'important' illnesses!' It really is outrageous and no different to people's reactions regarding HIV - people deserved it for having 'that kind of sex' - no concern for the women and babies innocently contracting it just like HCV.

I'm not a big FB fan but since I live further away I try to maintain contact with people where I grew up and I hadn't spoken about having HCV but posted accidentally one day a petition to the Gov re the new DAA's and PBS, it wasn't long after I posted that I'd started Tx for a 'chronic condition.' It was very interesting to see who responded and what was said. Put it this way, you learn very quickly who your real 'friends' are and I've not posted since. I now understand my brother's reticence and why he feels so very guarded.
I have no close friends here and therefore no-one knows what I'm on Tx for.

I wish you all the best in starting Treatment and to be on your own personal journey towards new health and healing
This site is great for info, guidance and support in a very non-judgemental atmosphere.

Tommy I'm sure Michael was not judging how people acquired the virus, just saying that he unknowingly donated blood and those needing transfusions and the recipients of his infected blood were innocently infected through no fault of their own. I have no idea how I got HCV, I have never had a blood transfusion never used IV drugs, therefore I would assume I innocently acquired it through someone else's carelessness i.e. dirty dental/surgical equipment, tattooist......and I will probably never know. As Chejai said, this site if for support of those with HCV and no-one is judgmental of others.

I have just finished 12 weeks treatment with Sof/Led and hopefully heading toward SVR in 12 weeks.

Lynne-Francis-facebook wrote: Tommy I'm sure Michael was not judging how people acquired the virus, just saying that he unknowingly donated blood and those needing transfusions and the recipients of his infected blood were innocently infected through no fault of their own. I have no idea how I got HCV, I have never had a blood transfusion never used IV drugs, therefore I would assume I innocently acquired it through someone else's carelessness i.e. dirty dental/surgical equipment, tattooist......and I will probably never know. As Chejai said, this site if for support of those with HCV and no-one is judgmental of others.

I have just finished 12 weeks treatment with Sof/Led and hopefully heading toward SVR in 12 weeks.

I understand what your saying. He worked in the healthcare field to for 50 years which may put patients at risk if he worked with them as you mention " someone else's carelessness i.e. dirty dental/surgical equipment".
I'm not hating on him or anything. Good luck with your SVR in 12 weeks.

Lynne-Francis-facebook wrote: acquired it through someone else's carelessness i.e. dirty dental/surgical equipment, tattooist......

Or in what will probably be mankind's epitaph: ".....if only we'd known!!!" and that applies to far too many examples already discovered and no doubt many things we will discover in the future.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but up until 1989 we hadn't dicovered HCV and for a lot of us here that was too late. But the problem is that the social stigma around IVDU has meant that regardless of how we got the virus we haven't felt comfortable with telling anyone. As a result there hasn't been an open and honest discussion about HCV in our society because the vast majority have not felt comfortable revealing their status. The result has been there is appalling ignorance in the general public and up till very recently very little pressure to solve an epidemic effecting probably one in forty people across the globe.

And that is both sad and has probably resulted in greater spread of this virus.


edit: my comments are not a criticism of Lynne's quote but a reflection on the changing sterilisation practices over time. The discovery of HCV and HIV resulting in a tightening of procedures when we became aware that what was previously accepted as good practice was not adequate for these viruses.

Junkies, little sisters, drunks, grandparents, dopeheads and mothers: people, each and everyone one. I probably picked my batch of HCV up from a rolled up $100 bill at some wild party in the 1970s..........doesn't make me any better or worse than anyone else. 19 years old, Draft lottery number: 009, party hearty!

And its 1,2,3..what are we fightin' for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam
And its 5,6,7.. open up the Pearly Gates
Well, there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee, we're all gonna to die.
-Country Joe McDonald
Woodstock

I gave blood a couple of times until this weird disease started killing all my gay friends...

Looking back, I would have done a few things differently. First off, I would use my own personal rolled up bill and not pass it around....

We are all the same, but totally different. It would be so boring if we weren't.

M

M...interesting corollary w/ my own life history except I was number 345 in the
draft lottery. Either youthful indiscretion or auto accident (4 surgeries) in the 70's
would be ground zero in my situation. I like to say auto accident

As others have said, it does not matter one iota how one got it. There are people
of different walks of life who have HVC. It doesn't matter what ethnicity, religion, gender,
rich or poor, HCV does not discriminate. As usual, the impoverished gets the shaft

Anyone that signs up and posts on this website gets my respect. It is hard to open
up to strangers (" stranger danger" is not for exclusively for kids) with personal
information.

MH...you have come to the right place. Read, ask questions, discuss and hopefully
you will be cured like many others on this site. Good luck....e.

Hi Michael,

In 1990 I was asked by the Red Cross Blood Bank to attend an appointment.
At this meeting I was informed that they were able to test blood donors for the Hepititis C Virus & my sample had come back positive.

I got infected in Oct 1990 - the Red Cross tests they brought in (Feb 1990) appear not to have worked too well.

On the issue of trying to fly under the radar so to speak, Hep C wise, I have similar feelings to you. I found that I had entered a whole new world where everyone talked about safe injecting practices and cleaning fits etc.

I also remember talking with a bloke at Hep C NSW who was very supportive for me at the time. He reminisced about how when the issue of medical transmission of HCV was raised around anyone from the Red Cross, this would see a conversation come quickly to en end!

For me, the Hep C NSW magazine seemed over the years to focus on Interferon and now poster like information about safe drug use. This of course is entirely justified, I feel, for the reduction in transmission of this virus.

An UNINTENDED consequence was that I felt disenfranchised from the whole issue. I too don't care how people get infected with anything really. But, I too work in health and often see how health issues can be reduced to some cartoon like poster pinned up on a wall, speaking to some stereotypical view about how 'consumers' understand things.

You probably have worked with the green sheets on health files that allow for alerts and warnings - Hep C of course featuring prominently among them. No blood changes hands on my Ward anyway .......

After 20 or so years, I found here on this forum a real and meaningful connection with people who have a similar goal of wanting to be rid of Hep C, and in being that, I have landed where I wanted to be when I was first diagnosed: connected to people with an illness we all want to be shot of, and people who share about their experiences getting rid of the disease. This is a place where I think I belong.


Yours


J.

Thanks for everyone's comments .
Just to clear up my story.
No, I wasn't pointing the finger at anyone.
I was the one feeling guilty after finding out that I was hepC positive & had been a blood donor for the past 20 yrs.
Yes, I was working in the psychiatric medical field for 45 yrs.
I was involved in acute admission , chronic, rehab, community, drug & alcohol counselling.

Junkies, little sisters, drunks, grandparents, dopeheads and mothers: people, each and everyone one. I probably picked my batch of HCV up from a rolled up $100 bill at some wild party in the 1970s..........doesn't make me any better or worse than anyone else. 19 years old, Draft lottery number: 009, party hearty!

Of course it doesn't matter, I agree with you Mike.
Yeah, back in those days things just "happened".

I was so young & gullible, just going along with the crowd, partied just a little too hard,
but I'm not ashamed, it happened & can't go back & change anything, and I've told my son J all about it, so he, hopefully won't make the same mistakes.
Learn from mine I hope.

His birthday today, sweet 16 !!

I was only 16 when I did that partying too hard....so young.

Cindi x

"I was the one feeling guilty after finding out that I was hepC positive & had been a blood donor for the past 20 yrs.
Yes, I was working in the psychiatric medical field for 45 yrs".

Interesting the similarities we find in each other on this site. We have worked in similar areas and if it was not for updated blood screening I would have happily passed on my problems to someone else too. As said previously, I think their screening was none to good anyway.

What I like about this forum is the new 'stories' being made for us as witnessed in the signatures. The rest of the comments are great and often, in many ways, the best entertainment as well. I felt here, even if people agree or disagree, I am understood. Can't get better then that.

I was/am so pissed off with Hep C, I will be happy to see just one of us get rid of it for good. Keep us updated with your progress.

Yours


J.

Sabrecat,
Yes we are very similar.
I'm G1a, F3-4, 2003 - 2004 Relapsed on Peg Interferon & Ribavirin.
I started my 24 week treatment 17 weeks ago with the first 12 weeks of Sof, Led & Riba.
The second 12 weeks is just the Sof & Led.
4 week PCR <12 Detected. ALT's in normal range
12 week PCR Undetected. ALT's in normal range.