"MARK!", Kevin announces, stressing the letter "K" in Mark. "Yeah?" he replies back, over the phone. "Ya
know who this is?" , "No!" Mark responds sarcastically. "Wanna play a thousand guesses? " Kevin asks
playfully. "Not really! It's 12:30 in the morning! Mark explains. "I know. I'm sorry, it's Kevin, Mark, Kevin from
Germany! Remember?". "Kevin!" Mark yells through the phone! "WE WERE just TALKING about YOU my
friend!, and our days in Germany, to our kids last week! Hooooly Cooow!" Mark replies stunned! "How the Hell
are you my friend?" Mark asks sincerely. "Not good Mark, I'm sick! I'm very sick!". "Oh man I'm sorry to hear
that, really Kevin, I'm truly sorry! What's the matter with you?" Mark further inquires.

When Kevin was diagnosed in December of 1997, four days before Christmas, he began to search for answers and an understanding of what had happened to him. The night he was diagnosed, he began to search for information about HCV on the internet. He still did not know anyone else from Germany was sick yet. It was still all a dream, "it couldn't be real", he thought to himself, with extreme comfort- at first! Anyone reading this story with HCV will understand this. You do not get "tapped" on the shoulder one day like this, and be told that "you may die soon", and "there is no cure!" without a predictable initial emotional denial, and a psychological response pattern of; Shock, Denial, Anger, Frustration and finally Depression - and Resolution of that expected Depression. Kevin was shocked at first! "LIVER!?! LIVER!?! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!! Liver?" was all he kept saying at first to the young Doctor. "Anything else BUT the liver!". he demanded! But it was true, how could he argue with valid test results? An old "B" from Germany 20 years earlier, and now HCV?. What the heck was that? H - C - V? Hepatitis C Virus? It didn't sound good! But he had had Hepatitis before, and "got all better! Right?", Kevin smugly thought to himself.

"Because I think we are ALL sick from Germany", Kevin explained to John. "Something is terribly wrong then!" John responds emphatically back. "Why do you think that" John asks abruptly. "I just know in my gut that something is wrong! We shouldn't all be sick!" Right?" "Whadda mean all?". "I found Mark and Toni in
Michigan, and guess what John? He might have it too!". "No Kidding!" John says with exasperation. Did he
test positive for it?" "No" Kevin replied. "not yet, at least" Kevin added. "but how do you know we got this from Germany?" He asks Kevin. "I thought I got HCV in the Hospital working in a Burn Center operating room!", John continues. "I know, I thought I got it myself from working in the operating room at Walter Reed Hospital, back in the early 1980's" Kevin explains. "Wow man!" John says surprisingly, "Imagine that! But are you SURE?" he sincerely questions. "Let me explain John!", Kevin says in slow deliberate and halting manner. Kevin speaks for almost an hour before John asks any more questions. "But how are we going to prove it" he finally asks. "We are the proof, John!" Kevin explains. "How do you explain this?" Kevin asks rhetorically, "without some kind of common connection to the military and Germany?" he continues.

On the International level a German man sits at the "Head" of an organization that is dedicated to helping
others, regardless of race, creed, or religion, benefiting HCV - supposedly. There is a problem though! A very
serious problem! As the German 19th Century "Grimm Brothers" , (Jakob and Wilhelm of Grimm Fairy Tale
fame, i.e., "Hanzel and Gretal" and "The Great German Dictionary") might say, "a WOLF in SHEEPS clothing!"
may be among us! His father, a man whom the century feared just 65 years earlier, was the number three-man
under "Himmler's" famed, S.S,. Nazi fighting troops. He wrote the book that "encouraged" violence and
organized "thuggery" against person's not of their liking, for Hitler - and Nazi Germany. The book was used
in conjunction with "Mein Kampf" (author: Adolph Hitler) to enrage, yet, another generation of Germans
towards Nationalism!, Time is time, and all that was long ago.... Or was it?

Walking back to the lecture hall, you reflect on your early years at John Hopkins University, and how "bright
eyed and bushy tailed" you were back then! You remember an old Professor from your first research study on," liver transmembrane potentials", talking to you one day about a "point in one's career". You remember him warning that the "Institutions that men build" are stronger and more powerful than "the men who built them"! That "Institutions have memories, and pride, and an instinct for survival, just like the men who create, and Direct, them. He would say. Sort of like an "ant colony" was the analogy he used - 30 years earlier. "Ready to continue Doctor?" your assistant snaps! "Give me five minutes Charles", you say, as you walk slowly away
from him and towards your office. You have never informally referred to this man as "Charles" before. He looks strangely at you as you walk into your office and shut the thick carved oak door. Your assistant runs back to the lecture room and announces, "Hey folks! Something's up!". Suddenly a hush occurs rapidly throughout the noisy, chattering audience. All eyes are on the assistant. The phone on the other end rings three times before it is answered. "Hi honey, it's me!" you start, before the other person can even say a word.

"What does our man on the Board say about the direction they are going to take", The NIH, Hep C Director asks into his cellular phone. He is speeding down the George Washington Parkway, along side the Potomic River, in his yellow ferrari. The Director is middle aged, and self-assured - maybe too self-assured? "They are going to encourage the Pharmaceuticals to "fund" the studies and they will receive generous tax-breaks that will more than offset their revenue base, retroactive for three years", he is reassured. "Ok, as long as they agree to it, and sign to it before election day. We do not need any more funding pulled" the Director explains. "We have been financially cut enough! Damm it!" He yells into the phone. "Years of hard work down the drain, for what? Something we didn't even do?" He begins to realize his dire predicament. "If we lose our man on the Hill because of this, in November, then you can say good-bye to our funding! And all that he has been
instrumental in getting for us, over the years!. That MAN's number one campaign contributor is guess WHO?"
the Director continues to scream into the phone. It appears to be only a one-way conversation. He continues
"And who do you think recommended ME for THIS position?" He's rambling now, all he can see are years of
hard work thrown away, and public humiliation brought upon he and his family's name. He slams the phone
down and steps on the gas! The look in his eyes is one of "survival"!

"Mark, before I tell you about my illness, TELL ME first, how ARE You?" Kevin demands gently with a rising
tone. "I'm fine, why?" Mark responds, uncomfortably. "OH! Ok, I'm glad to hear it buddy!" Kevin says. "Well
my Doctor said that HBV turned to HCV and if that was the case, then you would be sick too, Right? You had
"B" in Germany too, I think, Correct?" Kevin asks with some uncertainty. "Yeah, we all had it, the whole post!"
Marks informs Kevin. "I do not remember the whole post being ill, only One-half of our unit - but then again
I was gone most of the year" Kevin replied. "What? Are you kidding? Some of the other units were SO SICK
that the Army quarantined the barracks, don't you remember, Kevin?" As Mark said that, Kevin flashed back
twenty-odd years and, now, did remember seeing soldiers hanging out their windows, yelling to each other
because they could not leave their rooms for two weeks. They WERE "quarantined"! "Yes Mark, I do remember that Now." Kevin talks with Mark for over an hour, and he tells of his symptoms and his life over the last twenty years, Mark speaks of his family and his last twenty years. Mark is extremely concerned and finally wishes him luck! Both agree to contact each other soon, and that this was "a horrible way to have to meet again". They exchange phone numbers, and hang up. They will be speaking again in less than six hours. This time Mark has bad news for Kevin.

Earlier that day, and just two weeks after being diagnosed, Kevin had received a letter from the U.S. Army's
personnel center, in St. Louis, Missouri. It informed him that the Army was realigning the Reserves. He had a
choice, the letter read. He could resign his commission, and if that was the case then "thank you for all your
years of service". Kevin could join an active Reserve Unit, or Retire! Since the reason he was in the
"computer", in St. Louis, in the first place, and not some Medical unit in New York, was that three years earlier the Army had closed up just about all of the medical units in the greater New York City area. Republican controlled Congress saved the Southern Army Bases - where the political power had shifted nationally. New York State is considered a "Democrat" state, because of the many Unions, the Congress is controlled by "Republicans". There is a price to pay for not being in step! Remember Doctor? In Kevin's liver the "Hepato- citizens" continued to riot! Cell after cell was destroyed, each healthy cell reproduced up to fifty times in order to compensate for the dead ones. But, soon there is a point of diminishing returns met, and Kevin's liver was reaching that diminishing point. His weight began to drop precipitously in January. The medical tests, and Doctor appointments, started to fill the family calendar - hanging on the kitchen wall. By Februaary Kevin was becoming angry. "No! This not REAL!" was his reasoning. But, how else could he explain his slowly deteriorating physical condition over the last ten years?

The "Sonogram", that enabled a radiologist to see a "crude" image of Kevin's abdomen, hurt as the technician rolled a small "paint roller-like" object with vaseline on it across his tender abdomen. "You're fine was the final diagnoses". Yes, there was a "tiny" calcification on the spleen. Yes! The gall bladder looked strange, earlier in the day. (So strange that Kevin was sent home and told to come back in six hours to be re-tested). $500 dollars! "Thank you, you're all fine!". Next were more and more blood tests! "Ouch!" Kevin would think. His body was becoming tender as well as frail. His arm froze at 45 degrees, for a day, after the four tubes of blood were withdrawn from the "anti-cubical" area of the arm. Cubical, meaning the exterior elbow area. Anti-cubical, meaning the inner elbow area. The Ear, Nose and Throat Doctor said, "There's nothing we can do, It's the histological process of the virus". Meaning the virus, or a protein from the virus, is attacking the mucosa membrane or the surface epithelial cells of the inner nose, and sinuses. To be certain that no "Occult", or blood disorder, was the origin of increasing sinus problems - a sinusodial CAT Scan would be done. $1,000 bucks, "All fine! Thank you!".

Kevin lay on his back inside this huge machine for almost 30 minutes. Halfway through, a tear swelled and
fell off his right cheek. He hurt, he was uncomfortable, he felt sick, and he could no longer deny he was very
ill. Within minutes tears fell like rivers off both sides of his face. "there is no cure! I am too sick for therapy!
And I don't even know how I got this stupid thing", he thought, as the tears continued to flow. He wiped his
eyes with his increasingly sore hands. He had lost everything, now! His career, his body, and now his life was
steadily draining from the lacriminal gland ducts in his eyes! "Why me?" he thought with anguish. "Why me?".
His nose began to stuffed-up, and his neck started to spasm, he was just miserable. Just plain miserable!