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.

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.

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

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.

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. hmy:
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