I found out that I had been walking around with phneumonia for the past 4 months. I had gone to a Dr here in Bakersfield and he told me I had bronchitis and gave me something that had a HUGE liver warning on it. Suffice it to say, I did not take it and travelled 100 miles back to my regular Dr. He did the chest x-ray and discovered the real problem. Once he gave me the right meds, I was able to kick it in about 2 weeks. I had spent the past 4 months laying on the couch feeling like I could die at any moment.

In December we had some added stress with our daughter. She had lost her job and apartment and had no place to live so we took our Granddaughter while Erika tried to get settled. This turned out to be the beginning of a huge stress-filled couple of months. I was not sleeping well, trying to care for a 2 yr old, and worrying like crazy about Erika. Other than that, I was feeling much better!

January turned out to be even worse. When I went in for my January appt to USC I was at my wits end with my daughter. She had taken Arianna back to Ventura County at Christmas, but was now being kicked out of another place! As she still had no job, we told her to move up here and live with us so she could work on getting her life together. On her way here, she totalled her car in a rain storm on Interstate 5. This was pretty much the end for her. We tried to help her as much as we could, but she was very angry and did not want to be here. Her boyfriend was still in Ventura County and she wanted to be there.

The stress from all of this wore on me quite a bit. We argued daily, I could not sleep, and considered upping the Zoloft...but they don't make enough for what I was needing! She seemed to fight everything we tried to do for her at every turn. I was very depressed and my docs in the study were very worried about me. Luckily, my labs looked pretty good and I was doing well HepC-wise.

Being off treatment was a huge blessing during this time. I know if I had been on treatment, I would have probably committed hairy-cairy or worse. There were times I just wanted to go hide somewhere but knew I couldn't. It was very hard to keep trying to encourage Erika when she was so dead set against being up here away from her boyfriend. It began to look like she was never going to get her life together.  She was broke, car-less, homeless, and jobless. We figured we could get her straight if she stayed here. Having her here again was difficult as her attitude was really in the toilet.

All we could do at the time was try to tolerate her and hope she would wake up.......