Thus it rolls to a gentle halt.

It has been that kind of year for me. It started with promise and spluttered along for a few months and then just went I don’t know where . Can’t say it has been a bad year. Any year that you can see to the end must rate up there amongst the best . Can’t say I have had worse, the words “it will get better” spring to mind, I probably have, but they are far back in the place of no affect and little regard. The most out standing occurrence is I have actually got through to the end of this less than remarkable year.               
For me the fight against the virus is over, not my willingness to fight against it, just my financial ability to do so. Survival is all that counts now. Finding the resources to provide for my family for an undefined period alludes me. I am no longer capable of work, it is also a bit of a moral kick in the pants how I have been treated by those at work . Discarded , consigned to the trash heap. If I was bothered to feel anything for the plebes who have back stabbed me so they can work over time and give me false plastic smiles and sly words that they want me back at work, which is a blatant lie. I would get a bit of satisfaction of dropping them in the mire . But they are not worth the spittle necessary for me to part my lips. Yes I am slightly miffed. But I OWE NO MAN ANYTHING and refuse to be put in that position .
So for me, any treatment has flown past it’s sale date. No work. no cash , no prospects. Next year can only be an improvement on this one. There was for a time a great sadness in me, but that has passed. Truly one is as alone as you make yourself. I needed to be alone , probably still do. So as it bumps to an end I have a lot to find next year , how much strength I have in me to move on and beyond.

Nunc Demitus

Today is the one of many similar non events. The filler in ,between days. The only thing to remark about this one is I woke up, eventually.Will I comment on how my body is functioning, probably not. I am alive and I guess that is better than a lot who didn’t make it through the night.Am I depressed, clinically yes, but I have had much worse and still found my own presence with me.What has changed? I am no longer me, I’m not even someone else. I am nothing, neither dead nor alive I am just here.
Burned out, tired of life and tired of being.
You imagine that when you are drawing near to the end of things that you get a sense of release. That time when you have achieved that what was meant for you.I guess it is not so. I think it more a slide into not really giving a damn because it doesn’t matter for you any more.
If it was a case of accumulating positive thoughts and prayers, hugs and good wishes. Then I should have an over abundance of such things.
Inside I hold tears which I have no way of releasing. There comes no respite, I dream the dreamless sleep of those who are world weary. My tiredness is not just physical, it is me. My spirit, hopes and thoughts are tired. It isn’t the tiredness of well spent energy, of a good thing done of having achieved. It is the tiredness of those who have strived, put everything they have into achieving, only to have it taken from them at the last minute .Also ran’s in life. I am an also ran, although more of an also plod in my case. I am in the crowd, unremarked as a runner, of people in a marathon. The finishing line is just that little bit further on and out of sight. Who remarks about those who are not last, but fall out in the middle, who really cares.
Still not a good time for me to blog so this is it.

Just a chat

It is the first time for many weeks that I actually feel a little better. Strange that it is so, because for a couple of weeks now I have been fighting off the flu.Not the porcine variety, just the common , everyday virus. I think that for a while I shall leave the Hcv side of life alone. There is more to living than continuously trying to get on top of this pest. I have read enough and talked about treatments with many sources. At the moment I can do nothing, fit or ill doesn’t make a blind bit of difference what I try, so although I am not giving up I need to move on from here.
I wonder , even reading back on this blog , when I made the change from living to that of just existing.There has been a change and I have wasted this year for the most part. I guess in my inaction there has been a sense of security. If you do nothing you cannot fail and that is what I have done. I stopped doing things. Tiredness as got to be a habit, it is not that I don’t feel tired as I do.It is that I expect to feel tired and do less because of that expectation.

I do a lot of reading on forums.Although the names change, the general ebb and flow of the subject matter remains the same. There seems a greater turn over of members than before ,which could be that significantly more people are doing treatments and have obtained a positive result from doing so. But there also seem to be quite a few old slags like me who are still battling to get a grip on this thing. What I do notice is that it appears that people don’t read the old threads, so certain questions appear time and time again. I think that there is a bit to much technical information put about on forums. Okay for people like me who have been doing this for a long while ,we have grown use to the vernacular of treatment. But even then it takes a lot of knowledge to just get by. Why can’t things be just kept simple and so that you don’t need a degree to understand. A forum for Hcv dummy’s. There will always be people who like to know the ins and outs of a rats arse but the majority use simple speak and feel lost and hence don’t ask or post.
I think that Face book is actually a non social form of communication. People are so busy interacting with the use of the little gadgets that they forget to communicate in person. For me it may be a time to move on from that scene as it is not fulfilling any purpose other than filling in time without having to think. I don’t think I will totally leave it but I much prefer to chat in talk rooms and by e-mail. Apart from hundreds of kids in chat rooms these days there seems to be little adult and interesting discourse going on. Sad really.

Hcv the costs to a persons life ( thread closed)

My home town,Cape Town South Africa.Do you wonder why I love it here?

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When it comes to living your daily life with Hep certain things do get noticed although it may not be recognised at the time by you.Patience becomes very thin , short term memory does get affected. It seems that within minutes you can run through a whole gamut of emotions. Anger,sadness, being very alone, hate and viciousness. With the continuous contributions of the physical effects of having the active virus working 24/7 it is no wonder that you become depressed and exhausted. It is a trial trying to maintain composure, energy levels, hydration, exercise.Remembering to eat even if you have no appetite. In my case the constant itching and low grade headache. The pins and needles in the arms and legs, the dry eyes and gummy mouth. That strong metallic taste ever present. To remain constantly motivated is like a curse. You just want to give up , crawl off some where quiet and be left alone in your misery. But family , work and various other responsibilities have to be faced. It isn’t easy. With most illnesses the people in your every day environment expect that treatment will make you better and that in a short time all will be well. They have no conception of the slowness of anything when related to Hep c. Treatments are long and that any result will take quite often years to be fully realised. I myself on the most part don’t look well, but then again I don’t look sick either. Often the effort to maintain social relationships are too much to handle and slowly over time they drop away. You leave the active world and the only place left you have is the web forums. You actually become afraid to get involved with anything out side this little world you have retreated too. I find that a type of panic sets in if I have to do anything that is outside my immediate surrounds. I have become terrified of my work environment, insecure and unsure if what I am doing is up too scratch. I have lost my confidence. Things seem to be going so fast and so much is going on and I just cannot keep up or take it all in at once. Reading the threads and personal blogs of people on forums and webs I find that it is not unique to me. I and others have become virtual people who have only a virtual world for succour.

Hcv the cost to a persons life post 4

There comes a question of pain.Very few of us can go through life without experiencing pain in one form or another. My health problems apart from the Hcv infection has made pain almost a constant companion. I cannot say that the infection has made things worse in that regards, but I will say it has made it harder to manage and handle  any pain. Have things grown in severity? I think not. I probably have too much time these days to dwell on it , hence I guess I have a greater awareness that things hurt.

The problem comes in how you manage pain. For the most part these days I pop a sleeping tablet and sleep through it. For me that is the lesser of the two evils. I have only recently been taking something for sleep, so my body has not grown used to the medications and hence low doses help. Not one to have abused pain medication, but due too a life time of having taken increasingly stronger tablets and drugs, pain meds potency has decreased with time. The increasing stronger and higher doses of very active and damaging pain meds are not good too my system. I guess my body has become so used to various legal opiates that the relief from pain is growing less with use. So these days I restrict myself to when I use them,the amount and strength of the drugs that I need to get relief would probably seriously hurt most individuals. It has to be a case of I’d rather cut off that which hurts than go through that pain before I will take them.
There are things that I do find that help in their own small ways. Meditation where I put myself in to a place which is calming and apart from what is around me. Breathing exercises which help oxygenate and release endorphins. Massage which relaxes and stimulates the muscles increasing blood flow and removing toxins from the flesh. Warm baths, not hot, which relaxes and releases the tensions of painful parts. I’ve tried self hypnosis and acupuncture as well. The acupuncture isn’t for me though. I tend to have small bleeds at the sites afterwards, it isn’t anything to remark on but I don’t want to push my luck.(having a bleeding disorder makes it a bit chancy).

The thing is , we are all different, we all feel pain in different ways and in vastly different amounts. There is no need to suffer unnecessarily ,find what works for you and use it.

Pain wasn’t what made me push the doctors for the cause of what I was feeling. Having lived with and worked with pain it wasn’t that which drove me to chase a solution. What it was that led to my final diagnosis was something else. One was, I wasn’t happy with being diagnosed with having an enlarged heart. I didn’t believe that the increase in blood pressure was from my life style. working too long a day and work stress. Two, I didn’t believe that the cause of my continuous lack of energy and the reduction in drive was from being pre-diabetic. I ate far too healthily for that to be the reason. Three, the brown staining on my legs wasn’t due too my blood disorder, if it was why had it taken 40 years to show? Having been around a few people that had liver problems I knew that the legs and feet looked like theirs. Four, I picked up weight too easily. I used to struggle with maintaining my weight when I was younger. Haemophiliacs need to keep a little weight on to cushion the bony joints when knocked. But I picked up 20 kg in weight in six months and I was dieting to keep the weight off.Because of a diagnosis by one of the top cardiologists everything was disregarded by the specialists. I was suffering from hyper tension and an enlarged heart and was a type 2 diabetic. All of which was proved to be wrong later. As I have said previously in other posts it was luck that the real cause was found. At that time I had Hbv and a low viral count positive for Hcv. I still wonder if a true diagnosis had been made would I be suffering from as much liver damage that I have subsequently incurred. Well that is in the past and cannot be changed, but I would suggest that if you are not happy with a diagnosis that you push as far as you can even if the primary diagnosis is correct. You never know.

Hcv the cost to a persons life post 3

I have been a chronic insomniac for the greatest part of my life. It never caused a problem till lately. Even though I only average 2-3 hours a night actually sleeping , in the past it was enough and I didn’t feel any affects from such a short sleep period. But as the viral affects increased I find that the sleep I do have isn’t that satisfying restful sleep. I wake with a headache and continuously fidget all night. I’ve tried all sorts of sleep inducing methods, from not watching TV. two hours prior to sleep, to sleeping pills. Nothing really works, sleeping pills do knock you out but it takes hours to feel human again after. From warm baths and drinks too white noise and meditation ,I tried it all. There is nothing worse than trying to develop a sleep pattern when you are tired in body but become mentally hyper active as soon as you close your eyes.Ah well one day it will turn around I am sure.

What has happened in the last eight or so years is one thing that I personally find the most troublesome. The loss in co-ordination and sensitivity of my feet and hands. Cramps are frequent and painful. Hand. leg and arm spasms occur on a regular basis. Some are caused by a metabolite imbalance. As my liver deteriorates it becomes harder to take up the vitamins and minerals necessary. Some are caused by my lymph glands, which at the moment go out of balance with my bodies wants and needs.I have been the to various neurological specialists and under taken various tests but there is yet to be a diagnosis of what is causing things like the deadness of my feet, hand tremors and hand spasms. You read all sorts of possible reasons when you read up on web sites but are left still clueless afterwards. I hope that it is only a temporary condition and that when I finally get on top of this virus and beat it ,that it will all go away. I  firmly believe and want too beat the crap out of this bug it is just a matter of timing and luck. I really need to do this soon , as it is affecting my ability to work, which affects my income . This then severely restricts my ability to pay for treatments. Financial problems cause more stress. Which affects my sleeping even more. This reduces my bodies capacity to heal itself and ……it is just a continuous circle so I will not comment further.

Hcv the cost to a persons life.Post 2

At first when I found out that I had the active virus it came as no great surprise. What did come as a surprise was that I was also infected with Hep B. The thought strikes me that I haven’t been checked for a possible viral loading for it in the last 6 years. I have assumed that any possible further affect of the B virus was negated by showing a negative viral load and the presence of antibodies. I assumed that I had now acquired immunity from further infection from the B virus. Maybe I am wrong and will have to look into it. You can become  to much of a home expert of sorts and that would be a mistake.

My own experience when being treated by specialists for my hep c infection is just that. They are specialists in their field, haematologists treat the viral affects on my blood and my gastroenterologist treats the affects on my liver and related organs. As long as the treatment is affecting or possibly affecting that field of my well being related to their speciality they are only interested in that portion. The sides of the treatment or the virus which doesn’t drop into their speciality has no interest for them if it doesn’t come into their scope. So the majority of the side affects are monitored by my Gp. General medicine is basically that , knowledge tends to be knowing of but not knowing about specifically. So it falls into a best guess scenario. There seems to be no correlation of the many parts related to treatments of, and the affects from, the hep c virus. Over the years I have read many research papers of different thoughts as far as my limited understanding allows me. But I have yet to come across anything that approaches the viral impact and it’s treatment on the sufferer as a complete unit.( I am sorry I cannot think of the word at the moment) I feel that when it comes to treatments and management it should be a holistic( you see it comes!!). Best comparison I can make is what is known as the Butterfly affect. Where the flapping of a butterflies wing can affect the weather system of a place on the other side of the world. In us too ,our whole inner world is affected by a disturbance no matter how insignificant to not be noticeable but could have later ,greater, repercussions. As a person you get to a stage where you are not sure if you are showing paranoia by mentioning ,lets say, an itchy spot to your doctor, or stupidity by something happening and preventing it if you had mentioned it earlier. I guess on the whole we become hypochondriacs. So busy checking for possible problems that we develop  paranoia about our health. I say if you got an itch ,scratch it. If you feel you have a medical problem mention it. Too hell with paranoia and hypochondria.
There is lots more too talk about, such as sleeping problems and muscle weakness ,so I will carry on with this thread in further posts.