Hello again! This is a story I hope everyone who reads will please pay attention to and get tested for Hepatitis Type C.
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It is a disease that you can have for many years and not know it. I had it for twenty some odd years and didn't have any symptoms till about three years before my liver was gone. The only things that started happening to me were... I started getting tired a lot and my feet started holding water. I was employed as a fuel truck driver and was hauling heating fuel and gasoline. I started having a hard time staying awake while at the wheel and I would sometimes fall asleep in the middle of eating supper after work.
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After much nagging from my wife and my mother I finally gave in and went to the doctor to get a checkup. Little did I know what the results of that would be. After a few days in the local hospital with no definite diagnosis, a doctor from Pittsburgh checked me out and sent bloodwork away for analysis. It came back that I had Hepatitis C. I had never heard of it and at first didn't get too excited. That was in April 1995, but by July, I was getting sicker everyday and feeling very bad. The results of my first biopsy were that my liver was over 90% destroyed by cirrhosis and the rest was going fast. By December I was staying in bed almost all the time and was sure I was going to die soon. I was added to the transplant list at the Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute in Pittsburgh,PA.in November of 1995.
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Hepatitis C can only be transmitted by direct contact of an infected person's blood with your blood, such as intravenous drug users sharing a needle, from body piercing and tattooing, getting blood from an infected person into a cut on yourself or by blood transfusions. I had a tattoo done at a local county fair in 1973 and the fellow just picked the gun up off a holder and went to work. The needle was not changed or was it even cleaned since the last person was done. It may have done the last hundred people for all I know, but at that time the only thing you worried about was maybe getting blood poisoning or something simple like that. Little did I know how bad the poisoning would be. I feel fairly sure that is where I contracted the HepatitisC. It is the only thing I had done during that time in life that could have caused it. They told me that I had to have had it that long for it to have done the damage that was done to my liver.
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There are over 3 million people who know they have Hepatitis C in the United States today and the number is growing rapidly. There is no cure that will work for everyone. I had a transplant on the 22nd of January 1996 and it came back in the new liver the following October. I started treatment with Interferon alfa 2B and Amantadine in February 1997 and had special hepatitis blood work done every 3 months afterward. By November 1997 my bloodwork looked clear and then again in February 1998. They told me to stop the treatment. It has worked till now. In August I am to have a biopsy done. It will tell whether the Hepatitis C is still there or gone.
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Hepatitis C and chronic liver disease make your life a living hell, so please be tested if you feel you are at risk and don't wait like I did. I found out too late...
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