Hello James, welcome to the forum. You’ve come to the right place to learn about treatment options for Hepatitis C, many very experienced people frequent this forum. Hopefully the treatment course that you just finished cured you. DAAs are very effective and I think that you’re too pessimistic. You will not know the final result however before a test is administered 12 weeks after finishing treatment. In the unlikely event your treatment failed, re-treatment is entirely possible. Dr James Freeman (the doctor in the welcome video on the home page) is a world renowned Hepatitis C expert, and has a lot of experience in treating patients whose treatment had failed, I’m sure he will be able to help. Best of luck to you.

That’s great news Kaju, congratulations Please stay on course until you finish treatment, and keep doing what you’ve been doing until the last pill. Looking forward to reading your SVR 12 post soon

Hello mrcleanrt and welcome to the forum. I can only imagine how excited you must be that you finally have a real chance to get rid of that virus after all these years. Epclusa is a very potent medication and hopefully you will be amazed at how efficiently it will destroy the virus in a matter of weeks. Please keep us posted on how things progress and best of luck to you.

Welcome to the forum lifepivoting, and congratulations on finally getting your medication . Usually there aren’t any problems with US customs, I guess you’re one of the few unlucky ones. Drinking plenty of water means that you should drink water more than normal, as it helps avoid the side effects as you said, but of course without going to extremes. Perhaps one of the other members can give a more precise number in terms of quantity per day.
Also, please take your medication at the same time every day just before or with food as it helps with the medication absorption. Get enough rest, eat healthy (and avoid drinking grapefruit if you’re being treated with Daclatasvir®). In addition, never take antacids with Harvoni® or Epclusa® generics. Finally, the ‘During Treatment’ section of the FAQs page has some good information https://fixhepc.com/frequently-asked-questions.html Best of luck with your treatment.

Regarding your viral load and treatment response question Nick, Dr James answered this question earlier in this thread, he said that :”Viral load is essentially meaningless. Anything over undetected is a problem and the response to treatment is great regardless of starting viral load.” Best of luck.

Hi Nick, the new medications have about a 90% cure rate in Genotype 3 patients, so they are extremely effective, no need to worry. The difference now is that you can not be treated with ‘Harvoni’ (which is not effective against GT3), you have to be treated with either ‘Epclusa’, or ‘Sofosbuvir + Daclatasvir’.

Hello Nick, the ultrasound test will show your liver fibrosis level. You also need to have the following tests to get a prescription :

⦁ CMP (to know your liver and kidney functions)
⦁ CBC (to make sure not too anaemic and platelets are good)
⦁ HEP B CORE AB, TOTAL to know if you’ve been exposed to Hepatis B in the past. If this test is negative, you do not need to do any other Hepatitis B tests.

If you want, you can have these 3 tests for a very affordable price, and privately, if you order them through Link2Labs https://www.link2labs.com/home/product/products . Simply click on BUNDLED at the top of the page then order the ‘FixHepC 1’ bundle which costs 65 USD.