money cost

how in the world does one get help to pay for the treatment ? or can you get help? im kinda scared of this whole idea but i geuss is reallity. Does this disease make your bones hurt? or cause unknown reason for swelling in the ankles? i know these may seem like silly question , but these are the things i wonder about , sorry.

[granitekonig]

- Go to google.com

- Search for "hep C" and do some reading

- Treatment is very expensive

- Insurance pays for most of our treatments

[inkster37]

hey thanks , man

[desrt]

Commitment to Care [phone]

PegAssist [phone]

[HectorSF]

These are good questions -

You should talk to you doctor about how to pay for treatment as they have other patients doing the same thing as you. If you can get the meds for free, all the better. See desrt's post. But you will still need tests (different blood test, biopsy) and doctors visits so anyone with HCV needs health insurance in the USA. Period. At least until our current health system is overhauled. But don't hold your breath waiting because too many people are making a lot of money with the current system.

HCV over time causes liver disease if you are infected and your body couldn't kill the virus itself. That is what you want to avoid. Without a liver you can live.
Bones hurting? Not a symptom of liver disease.
Swollen ankles? Only if you have advanced cirrhosis. Stage 4 liver disease. Stage 4 usually takes many decades to develop. 30 years plus. You look too young for that to be an issue. Lucky you. Do you know when you were exposed to Hep C? A biopsy which cost $$ is the way to find out the condition of your liver.

Get insurance. Get tested. Then decide if and when you need to be treated.

Good luck.
HectorSF

[nygirl7]

If you don't have health insurance you can look into one of the government trials going on.  They pay for the tests and the meds.  

If you are denied by insurance you can call one of the two numbers above for Commitment to Care of Pegasys but then you'd have to still pay for all the tests.

It gets VERY expensive unfortunately not only the meds and tests that you expect but one med that we need to take sometimes on this treatment to fix the hemolytic anemia is $6,000 a box and I was using one box every five weeks.

I figure my entire 72 weeks of treatment cost about $200,000.  At the time I had a dreadful boss but I did everything I could not to get fired just because of the insurance. Now I understand why it's so important to have a good job that has insurance, I never really got it before even though I'd had some major drama's........none that cost that much!

Hep can cause a lot of pains and aches - I never had any though and only found out by pure luck that I had the disease.  Don't be afraid of the disease or the treatment - there is a cure and new science every day is raising the response rates greatly.

Just do what you gotta do to get rid of it - that makes it all worthwhile in the end.