Introduction II

[Guest guest]

I let it go for a few years, never went back, and continued with my lifestyle. A

workaholic alcoholic with HepC. But it always sat there in the back of my mind

that this creature was still there, still inside me. So in 2003, I told my PCP I

wanted to go through the treatment again. He sent me back to the GI doc who

shut me down and said the evidence showed that retreatment of nonresponders

doesn't work. But I am a scientist and more importantly, a virologist. I read

the literature and he was dead wrong; quite the opposite was true. So, I asked

my PCP to let me choose another hepatologist. He did and I found a wonderful doc

at Stanford. The good news was that there was PEG-IFN. The bad news though was

that retreatment was 48 weeks, not 24 and the side effects would be worse the

second time. I'm a tough old dog, and told him I wanted to do it. So begins

Round 2.

Round 2 greeted me with the same side effects as Round 1 and I was PCR-negative

at about 1 month. About 24 weeks in, I was really washed out… very depressed and

drinking heavily. I began to develop horribly painful ulcers in my mouth, so

painful that I could barely eat or drink. So my PCP gave me vicodin for pain.

At about 32 weeks, I was so weak, I could no longer work and was put on

disability. I really built up a tolerance to the vicodin and I was about eating

12 a day plus drinking a pint of vodka. Talk about beating the crap out of your

liver!! Two weeks into disability, my kids came home from high school one day

(I hadn't eaten and vomited everything I drank, water, tea, vodka, everything

for 3 days) and I barely had the strength to dangle my legs over the bed, I

asked my son to take me to the ER. By the time we got there, I was so weak, I

couldn't walk. The emergency nurses were all over me. I had no veins, but the

finally got an IV started. My labs came back in about 20 minutes and I had

doctors crawling all over me. My red cells (RBCs) were at 10%, white cells

(WBCs) 9%, and platelets at 8% and my liver enzymes were practically off the

chart (~6000x). They were scared to death; I was too sick to be scared of

anything. They asked me if I had been bleeding anywhere, stool, vomit, nose,

anywhere. I hadn't. X-frays, CT, ultra sound all came back negative for

hemorrhage. They stopped all medications and packed me off to ICU. They had

contacted my hepatologist who started the process for transport to Stanford on

the chance that I moved to fulminant hepatic failure. Ironically, ultrasound

revealed a perfect liver, no portal vein or hepatic artery obstruction, no

hepatomegaly. They were completely baffled. Meanwhile, I was transfused with 4

units of packed RBCs, 2 units of platelets, and 6 liters of saline. I lied

through my teeth to them about drinking and then they brought up the vicodin.

They asked how much I was taking and I said I was taking what it said on the

bottle 1-2 every 4-6 hours as needed for pain. I said I was always in pain so I

was taking 2 every 4 hours. They asked me for how long. I said about 2 weeks

and they almost crapped their pants.