Treatment?

[fretboard]

I've had a handful of very close friends go through treatment sucessfully so I'm looking into taking the plunge.  Last year when I saw my doctor he said, well your body has accepted the HepC pretty well and treatment is a decision that you will have to make on your own.  His reasoning and this is just a guess. is I was diagnosed in 1992 over 15 years ago and I don't have many symptoms.  Well I don't know if that's so true, my hands swell at the end of the day as well as my feet, he said that could be from something else.  It seems to me that the doctor that I've been seeing is of the mindset of "we will fix it when it breaks down", meaning when my eyes turn all yellow and my belly swells up then we will treat it.  Has anyone on this forum run into a similar situation?  Oh other symptoms that I have are that I've gotten bitter, angry, depressed and to talk about physical symptoms.  I seem tired forever laying around the house has turned into a hobby, after work of course.  I'm loosing my hair and I'm not going bald.  It just seems to me like Doctors should do a little more than say "well the treatment success rate is around 40 to 50 percent, now you decide.  later  

[fretboard]

Well I have an appointment to start treatment on March 6th, so hopefully I can begin treating this disease.  What is important to me is what happens from here on out.  I didn't even consider treatment because I was fearful of the side effects that I was hearing so much about and again the doctor I've been seeing has left the decision totally up to me, so yeah it's my own fault that I've put off treatment.  I guess I was hoping a milder form of treatment would come along.  Anyways, now I have the balls it takes to look at this disease for what it is, a killer and I'm more willing to accept what I have to go through.  About losing my hair, I'm not going bald.  There's no history of baldness in my family, on either side and I've heard from a couple of different people who had HepC and they said they had the same symptom as well.  I wash my hair, in the shower or whatever and when I dry it and I shake the towel I can see it.  thanks

[copyman]

also check your thyroid, many of your symptoms sound like what a bad thyroid can do to you. HCV is known to affect the thyroid. this disease is easier to treat earlier then later.

[FlGuy]

You mention that your hands swell, you are bitter/angry/depressed, a couch potato, losing hair but not going bald (think you're kidding yourself here) and you are left wondering. Here are two big clues, you are 54 and you have hcv.  Interestingly both bring similar effects like the ones you mentioned and brain fog (still sharp as a tack?), visual changes (do you need longer arms to real well), loss of libido (you must really be a turn-on by your description), numbness in extremities (yeah, that one too), muscle and joint pain, blood sugar abnormalities.  With advancing age and likely advancing hepatics c, you need to do something since you are closer to the end than the beginning. Get off the couch, find some meaning, exercise, eat well, find a purpose and figure out what to do about your hep c.  Do you imagine that a year from now you'll be better off than you are now.  It might be time to do something.  Don't have any symptoms?  You have a gaggle of them, I would expect.

[desrt]

Since only 20% of those infected with HCV will progress to fatal cirrhosis or HCC and current treatments only work for half the patients, someone could argue that only one out of ten should be treating with current methods. At stage 2, I might disagree with your doctor's statement that "your body has accepted the HepC pretty well" but I can certainly understand his wanting to leave the decision up to you. Today's standard of care is fairly harsh and many end up feeling worse than before they treated, even when the treatment is successful.
It's your choice. Educate yourself, then decide.