Poll: HCV Acute Phase

[Verdugo]

Do you recall your acute phase?  

Although it does not matter how we were infected, it does matter when we were infected -- so that we may track the progression of our HCV.

Thanks all.

[RickVaug]

Got mine from an injection to protect against A and B from USAF during 1989 / 90 Desert Storm ( I flew for the AF)
Lots of other injections we received had side effects but the GG shot went into your butt and dissolved slowly so there was none other than a rough time sitting on the flight deck for several hours
Life continued on normally till I started treatment and then life went to hell and has never recovered

[otterwatcher]

it was awful,I got really sick,eventually jaundiced,couldn't hold any food down so lost half my body weight and it took over a year before I was starting to get better. no liver damage or sx prior to treatment,now 8years post successful tx suffering with post interferon syndrome,no life.

[Verdugo]

Thanks for participating in this poll.  

Looks like half of us (myself included) don't have any memory of being sick.  I don't know why but that is oddly reassuring to me.  

I've always assumed I was infected thru a blood transfusion but without a memory of the acute phase, it's impossible to know for sure.

Thanks again,
V.

[Frank J. Perrotta]

Had no idea what HepC was.

For my 40th bday I went to the free clinic and had a health exam. When the doc came into the room he exclaimed how shocked he was at my fitness! I was living in San Francisco and was riding a single gear bicycle, jogging up & down those hills daily.

I believe my body did know as I would get pretty blasted on a single beer and really ill on a few drinks.

I was able to keep up a lot of my exercise regime (I moved from SF to PA to help out my parents then started treatment that lasted 72 weeks!!!) thru-out treatment and became undetectable but as time went on and month by month things got worse and worse instead of better and we learned about P.I.S. - Two years after treatment I was declared disabled due to treatment ... mostly due to fatigue! If I had stayed in SF I was told they did not have the budget to treat and I probably would have still been running those hills! UGH!

[kuku4kokopuffs]

I know exactly how and when I contracted HepC. It was in 1996 and at the time I was very physically fit, riding a mountain bike 10-12 miles every day.

When the symptoms came on I knew what they were, because I knew how I got it and had previously had HepB in the 80's, so I was familiar with the symptoms. It laid me out for 3 weeks, during which I spent most of my time in bed and playing video games in between the times I wasn't too fatigued to stay awake.

Around the 3 week mark I started to feel better, and since I had been on my back the past 3 weeks, thought I'd try to get back on my bike and get some exercise. I only made it a few miles before the sweat was pouring off me like rain and the fatigue hit me hard. I had to walk my bike to a place I could sit in the air conditioning till I had enough strength to get back on and coast most of the way home.

It set me back to where I was as sick as I had been at first and took another 3 weeks before I was starting to feel well again.

I've never taken treatments or had a biopsy but feel like I'm getting to the final stages now and living on borrowed time. I quit drinking altogether when I found out I was positive and haven't drank since, but have a long history of opiate abuse and only been able to stop over the last 4 years.

I live alone and fatigue is still my major symptom, where I sleep about 50% of the time. I don't have anyone to depend on to help me get things done now, so I don't know if I could handle being real sick for months and still get the everyday.tasks like doing laundry, going grocery shopping, house cleaning, etc. if I did take treatments. I don't have any friends or close family I can depend on and am pretty much alone in the world sitting around waiting to die.

[Blessed162]

I recall being very sick after a blood transfusion in 1972. I woke with night sweats so bad I'd have to change my pajamas and sheets and I was exhausted all time. I was a new mother--had the transfusions when I hemorrhaged during delivery--so my doctor at the time diagnosed me as just a tired Mom. (HepC hadn't been discovered then.) I lost a LOT of weight, too, but decided that must be because I was breast feeding. (Thankfully, I did not transmit the disease to my son.)
My HepC was discovered when blood tests during a routine physical in the late 90s revealed elevated liver enzymes and that led to further blood work and a liver biopsy. I was on 6-months of interferon and later 6-months of interferon and riboviran. I responded initially with undetectable virus loads but relapsed pretty quickly after treatment ended.

[orphanedhawk]

Although I don't remember at all,I have a friend who does remember getting jaundice and kind of sick at  time when she was partying a lot.
So remember some don't. Some have symptoms that show, others don't.

[asle]

I remember getting HepB in the early 80's with jaundice, fever, nausea, apathy etc.
But somewhere around the early 90's my blood tests came back positive for HepC. I don't remember a transition faze, but with all the home detoxing etc, I may not have noticed.

[ActingBrandNew]

I was getting high so wouldn't be able to distinguish whether I was sick from the hep or from the dope.

[JimmyMose]

I sure do remember! In Jan 1980 went to Miami shared needles and sex with a Cuban lady. Went to Key West and it was rainy and 55 degrees got strep throat. Got better near the end of that week and went back to Buffalo, NY  A couple weeks later came down with acute (non-A non-B then) hep C.  
I got chills, sweats, nausea, vomiting, dark brown urine and white coated stools.   Couldn't eat got some meds via rectum. don't remember my  enzymes levels. was back to "normal" within a week. I consider myself very lucky to have had the acute symptoms and immediately stopped sharing needles(equipment etc) Stopped IV injecting within a year.  A few other users who shared needles(HCV status unknown) caught HIV and were dead by the late eighties.

I was confirmed with HCV 1999  G2a,2c  Hoping to start treatment in early April Sovaldi RBV 12 weeks  I am waiting to get a more updated confirming genotype test result next week.

[nursehepc]

I am an unusual case. I worked as a nurse on a transplant unit (kidney, pancreas, liver, heart - whole organ). In 1982 it was just kidney and liver. It was in 1982 that I was routinely drawing my blood (because of work in a high risk area for exposure) that I had enzyme elevations where I caught my enzymes on the way up (to a max of an ALT over a thousand - definately my acute phase). It was called non-A, non-B hepatitis back then (we ruled out A and B and mono). I lived with my mom (was 23) and all my life consisted of was working out, work and skiiing (no other exposures possible). The infectious disease person on the transplant team followed me. I went on bed rest for a month (the only time I ever took any time off because of my hepatitis) and stayed at the hospital 4 more years. Back in the day it was thought that if your enzymes stabilized after a couple of years, you had likely cleared the virus. My enzymes returned to baseline and fluctuations stabilized after a couple of years and I lived my life accordingly. I had left nursing in 1991 and didn't look back until I became aware that I likely had hepatitis C and was tested (I did and do). I was exposed to blood on a daily basis (not all exposure is percutaneous - my exposure was in 1982 and that was before universal precautions). When I was acute, I was working nights and any fatigue I had was indistinguishable from typical fatigue from shift work.