Hepatitis C Support Group

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne viral disease which can cause liver inflammation, fibrosis, cirrhosis and liver cancer. The hepatitis C virus (HCV) is spread by blood-to-blood contact with an infected person's blood. Many people with HCV infection have no symptoms and are unaware of the need to seek treatment. Hepatitis C infects an estimated 150-200 million people worldwide.

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Early symptoms

adlk1234
adlk1234
I know a lot of you are probly not in the early stages of this but can anyone recall what their earliest symptoms were-like the most bothersome? Mine seem to be fatigue and nausea-mostly nausea. Also, my viral load is at 120,000. Is that considered high?
hepcme
hepcme
vl is not a concern they say but yours is low others go into the millions
ImKramer
ImKramer
I remember about 30 years ago (I've had HCV 40+years) I would just be walking down the street and get hit by a wave of fatigue. like just taking steps forward walking down the sidewalk, well it felt like I was trying to walk forward as if I was walking in water up to my knees. VEry strange.
Other than that I had no real symptoms. I worked long hard days up until about four years ago, after doing Interferon, I never recovered.
ImKramer
ImKramer
BTW your viral load is very very low. That being said VL does not really matter. You can have a high VL and have little activity going on or a ver y low vl ans lots of destruction going on.
It's best to have blood work done to get your liver panels to see what your grade and stage of liver damage is going on.
WarriorGal
WarriorGal
When you say early symptoms -- were you recently diagnosed? Do you have any idea when you contracted the virus? Most of us had the disease for many years or decades before diagnosis. Some get flu-like symptom immediately upon contracting it, some, like me have no idea we have it and are totally a-symptomatic.

Fatigue is a common side effect of HCV.

And, yes, VL can go into the millions and varies and means nothing unless you are in treatment. Then you are looking for it to become undetected.

If you are new to all of this, what you need to find out is your Genotype because that determines your treatment plan.