Seems a little strange to me that any health care worker would care if we have hep c or not. Are they the very health care providers who never offered a blood test for hep c that so many of us now being told 20+ years later we are infected with?and can do little for now.
I have gone for many surgeries and a annual blood test my whole adult life and just now at 55 I'm told I have hep c and it may be the start of chirosis. If only my doctor had told me years ago I would have taken much better care of myself never to end up in this position.I do take responsibility for my mistakes, but just maybe the health professional should take responsiblity for their mistakes as well.
dont forget everyone on this site knows you have hep c too...MILLIONS OF PEOPLE
i think you should keep the fact that you have hcv always to yourself, except for people who are close to you!!!!!
people unfortunatly don't respond well to the fact the you have it and many medically illiterate people will even be scared of you and treat you like ******, which ofcourse is very humiliating
even the dentist, why would you tell him anyway. he should always exercise caution regardless he knows or not. What if a patient has it or has HIV and doesn't know about it?? he should always be carefull anyhow and that's the dentist you should pick in the 1st place for your OWN safety. There could be another patient who had HBV and doesn't know, how about that for you...
anyway that's my personal opinion....the ONLY people who know I have HCV are My parents, girlfriend, sisters and my hepatologist!!!!
cheers.......
If a dentist won't treat you because you have Hep C or doesn't treat you well (providing the service that you are paying for) then you should not only stop seeing them, but you should inform your insurance company (by letter) that the dentist is unacceptable why.
Complaining to the *right* place often brings results. It's also perfectly fair to expect your insurance company to provide you with a dentist who will take good care of your teeth--hep C or not. That's the whole point of having dental insurance!
I dont really think that most dentists think about us all that much after we leave the office really and doubt that one would be prompted to tell another patient that you have the disease. A LOT of people do and it's only the correct thing to do to tell the dentist.
About the antibiotics...........they no longer give antibiotics to people who have heart murmurs (in general) - I just recently went to the cardiologist who told me that practice has been abandoned, so I doubt that they would ever think it necessary to give them to someone with hepc. There really would be no need for such a thing that I can think of.
Nobody should be treated like krap for having hepC but we do all realize that there are ignorant morons in the world - dentist or not........and if one treated me badly I'd just up and leave him and go elsewhere. Not everyone is a complete idiot and you are bound to find a decent person eventually. I've been to several different dentist and none of them have treated me poorly due to my disease.
>>If we are ashamed of our disease, or embarrassed, or in anyway feeling that it makes us less we are opening the door to be treated like we should be.<<
I don't know about the warm fuzzy part of having the disease or if having higher self esteem should even come into the picture. By saying that, I think you're making an excuse for dentist to treat some patients like krap. Just because you haven't been stigamatized doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. Also I think it happens across the board and I don't think it happens because of the above mentioned. However if you are right, then please post some evidence that says that it's ok for a dentist to treat you like krap and the acceptable reasons for doing so.