New to Hepatitis C

[alisemaria]

My brother-in-law has been diagnosed with Hep C. Dr's tell him he needs treatment and should start right away. He has decided not to get treatment because he doesn't want to go through the side effects which I have read and heard are very horrendous. I don't know any of the technical terms - just am very concerned that he doesn't want treaments. What can happen if he goes untreated. Also, I read that Pamela Anderson went homeopathic and has had good results. Can anyone speak to these things?  thanks & glad I found this forum

[newleaf09]

There are always people who will say that the treatment is horrible.  There are also drug labels that list every single possible side effect that any patient has ever, ever had.  Neither of those mean the information is true for an individual patient.  I did not have flu-like symptoms or headaches or nausea or depression or any of the other scariest side effects from the drugs.  All my hair did not fall out.  It's very easy to get frightened of the treatment after reading about it.  I found the information on decompensated cirrhosis and liver cancer to be much, much more frightening.  That was all it took to get me to treat the disease and I would do it again in a second.

Your brother-in-law needs information.  He needs to learn more about the treatment and the disease both.  If he would get further into the screening process for treatment he would have more information to make a decision.  People who decide against treatment should have a liver biopsy, a simple out-patient procedure that takes a small sample of the liver that is looked at by a pathologist to determine how much damage has already been done to the liver.  That will either reassure him about his decision not to treat the disease or change his mind.  It's a disease that progresses slowly with no signs until terrible damage has been done.  It's a terrible risk to ignore it.  If his damage is not too great, he would be safer to wait until several new HCV treatment drugs come onto the market in 2011 or so.  They have the potential to reduce the treatment time to 24 weeks instead of the current 48.

If Pamela Anderson has cured the disease that would be great.  I suspect that she just hasn't gotten any worse on homeopathic medicines.  It's not the same.  Good luck dealing with it all.

[Bill1954]

Very well spoken, Newleaf.

Alisemaria, Listen to newleaf; your brother-in-law might enjoy reading, and possibly participating in the dicussion group with us. Good luck to you all--

Bill

[alisemaria]

Thanks very much for your comments - I really appreciate it and have passed them on. I'm going to let him know about this forum. It looks like there is some great support and info here.

[nygirl7]

Pam Anderson has gone on tv at times and said that the herbal medications have kept her viral load low. This is something that really does NOT matter with hepatitis very much at ALL - even though it sounds like it should.  I would not trust very much anything that she has said about it because of this fact.

Things that do matter are how advanced his liver damage is and the only way you can find that out is by having a biopsy. It sounds painful but is not as your liver has no nerves for pain inside it - so it's really sort of like just getting a needle.  His liver enzyme levels do matter because they can show how much liver cell death might be occuring. Viral load - really has nothing to do with either of these things.

The only way to be cured of this disease is by taking the medications.  They do cause side effects but mostly they are manageable.  Even for a widow like me with two children I was able to do them and come to work and take care of my children - and I had the side effects pretty drastically at times. I just knew I did not want to wait until it was too late to do anything about it and then regret it.

Many times there are no symptoms but that does NOT mean that the damage isn't being done.  They call this disease a Silent Killer because of that reason.

Please advise him to join the forum or go to a good heptologist and learn these things before it is too late.  The biopsy would be the best / only way to tell that he has time to wait or not - and even with wait you must stay on top of these things and be checked every few years at most because the damage can go very slowly at first and then zoom up as it advances.

You'd hate to find out he had advanced cirrhosis when he could have been cured way before that.

Good luck.

[alisemaria]

Thanks very much for all the info. It was after I read your comments about fighting through this that I decided to join this forum. I hope he'll join and get the support and help this forum can offer him.