Thank you all for your input. It is greatly appreciated. I’m quite nervous about taking it since weakness is a side effect of the drug and Myasthenia Gravis is Latin for “Grave Weakness.” My neurologist highly encourages me to take the medicine, but I haven’t talked to him personally yet to hear what he thinks I might expect as side effects.

Oh, for the record, I was diagnosed with MG ten years prior to receiving the infected IVIG treatment. It seemed like there might have been some confusion about that. Hep C did not cause any other illness for me, so I don’t expect any illnesses to be alleviated with the Hep C cure.

My gastroenterologist prescribed eight weeks for me. I think it’s because my viral load is relatively low compared to other Hep C patients. With that said, I will double check to see if she thinks that this will be sufficient or if I will need another four weeks of treatment.

HCV RNA, QN, PCR 69900 IU/ML
Alpha Fetoprotein 1.6 NG/ML
Alanine Aminotrans(ALT) 49 U/L
Hepatitis C Quantitation 195,000 U/L
HCV log10 5.290 NORMAL
ALT (SGPT) P5P 71 HIGH
Fibrosis Score 0.03 NORMAL
Necroinflammat Activity Score 0.33 HIGH

The diet change is simply because I believe in a holistic approach when facing intense medical treatment. Lacto-ovo vegetarians still can eat plenty of protein -it simply isn’t sourced from meat. I’m also working out six days/ week, which I have been doing for years. I have also started to do yoga again. During treatment, I hope to continue to exercise. Sleep is incredibly important and powerful to my well-being, so I am working on making sure that I get enough of it every night. I will also plan a couple of massages during the eight weeks. My biggest vice is diet soda. I have reduced my intake to about 1/10 of what I was consuming, but I would like to quit it altogether.

Gaj, thank you for pointing out that oftentimes we only hear about the bad reactions/ outcomes as opposed to all of the success stories. This is daunting for me because I don’t want the MG to be exacerbated by (generic) Harvoni. Still, I want the cure badly enough that I’m willing to try.

When I was infected, I was a 21 year old college student. At that time, I was told to never get pregnant because I would infect my baby. I have faced numerous rejections from men when they heard that I had Hep C. My husband and I didn’t even fill out the adoption/foster parent forms when we were told that the agency would do a deep investigation into our health. Most people don’t realize how much Hep C altered my lifecourse. And just because my viral load is relatively low and I don’t have any fibrosis doesn’t mean that the Hep C didn’t leave any scars.