RE: New to the Group/Mark

[Guest guest]

Hi

Mark, Welcome to the family. Sorry to hear the past tx’s have

failed you, but maybe this one’s the charm. How long are you

expecting to go this time? Or are you winging it VL to VL?

Dick

deals with the VA hospital, maybe the same one you’re using. We

have a lot of folks on tx now and a few who have tried multiple times like

you. So you ain’t alone, pal. We’re here to love &

support each other thru it all.

in Georgia, 50

Type 1

Kicked my

dragon’s ass almost 3 years ago & he’s still laying down

New to the Group

Hi everyone My name is

Mark and I just joined the group today. I

live in Arcata, California...it's up in the NW corner of the state.

I'm 52 and I've had HCV for about 30 years now. Just finishing my 4th

month of Pegasys/Copegus. My starting viral load was supposedly 23

million but that result, in my opinion, is invalid. I discovered the

VA clinic up here didn't know they needed to freeze the samples and

they were just shipping them refridgerated. Whats even more disturbing

is that the VA lab in Palo Alto that runs the test was accepting them

unfrozen and running them anyway. That would never happen in a

civilian lab. Having been a lab tech for 30 years I am very familiar

with the handling requirements and know that unfrozen the virus

degrades and you end up with falsely elevated numbers. So I think it's

safe to say that my starting viral load was at least a few to several

million. It had been 4 million a year ago. It was 600,000 after the

first month of treatment and 58,000 after 3 months. Will be getting

another viral load soon an I guess this one will determine if I am

still responding. I'm genotype 1A and had previously failed 3 courses

of interferon back in the 90's...Intron A alone, Infergen, and

Intron A/ribaviron combo. So being a 3 time loser...I have my fingers

crossed.