Hi Jolie

Yeh it was nasty stuff, I have a very close friend who also took it, but a trial with much higher doses of interferon. We both often said over the years we felt like something ate our “soul” or “core” lights gone out all that type of feeling… But he still carried on better than I did, he though had been cured.

I was ok pre interferon too, not perfect, but I coped, had jobs, did stuff, wanted things, needed people, even with the knowledge I was hcv positive. I put the post tx downfall down to a combo of a full life catching up to me at a very vulnerable time, plus the damage from those drugs, I withdrew from friends and family, literally became a hermit. Aside from the physical changes, I couldn’t cope with people anymore either. At all. I didn’t bathe or clean my house.. I moved into this house just after interferon.. Today 10 years later, I still haven’t unpacked my stuff.. Just a sense of camping until I died I guess.. I went to a shrink for 2 years after, trying to find a spark again, but it just wasn’t there. And after about 5 or 6 years I just started to try and accept what I had left as my lot and did/do find some very genuine peace in that.

It just dawns on me now I am cured too, it was a very bad case of loss of hope, if interferon didn’t work, then nothing was going to. That’s how it was a decade ago.

Something good started stirring in me again even before I got my hands on sof/dac.. It was Dr Freeman’s news actually being so tangible, close and accessible. And since it has officially gone… I have had flashes back to moods of my early 20’s.. That feeling of what will I do with my life.. but in a good way..

Pretty amazing, I dunno if I will become a super housekeeper and fitness freak or relaunch my old life, lol, but that blankness/pointlessness is gone and i know deep in my bones life is ok again.