there are plenty of people here who can answer your concerns.im the least qualified,but ill tell you hcv is something that may not even shorten your life,barring alcohol and other complicators.the treatments today are having appr 65% success.treatment is a hard time but doable for most.some genotypes are harder to treat than others.liver disease may kill you but you may be in your 70,s when that happens.it will make you assess whats important in life and make you stronger. dont worry needlessly bout something you cant change.good luck to you, im bob from indiana

Welcome! I am certainly no expert, and there are experts on this site, since I haven't even started my treatment yet. I would not be concerned that your doctor is going faster. HCV is a slow disease. As for your other questions, there are still many missing pieces in your puzzle. The level of your VL does not necessarily correspond to liver damage with Hep C. I would guess that a biopsy is in your near future. That will determine what, if any, damage you have already sustained. Once that is determined and a time-line is established...how long have you had Hep C...will then give you a better picture of how the disease is progressing in your body. Then you can answer the treatment/no treatment question. I would say, for whatever my opinion is worth, that you should be proactive, call your doctor and move forward with finding out exactly where you are in this. Gather as much information as you can, which you seem to be doing, and then make the best decision you can.

You are not alone!

Rob

Welcome to Daily Strenght and our Hep c community.

Here is a list of things you should know, and do towards getting treated for your virus.

First your Primary Care Physician will refer you to a good gi, liver doctor. In your case, the program will refer you to a liver doctor.
The liver doctor will then proceed in getting the procudures, and tests required.

The first one if not done already will be the:

PCR blood test.
This will determine your genotype, which will reveal the lenght of the treatment, and the viral load, which will be needed to determine if you are a responder to these combo meds.
I do believe you told me that you were type 2 or 3, so this is only 24 weeks of therapy.

Then CBC blood test.
This is the complete blood count of his blood. The is very important, it will tell if you liver enzymes are in the normal range or not, check the thyroid, again see if it's working properly, maybe remind him to make sure your iron levels are normal.

The biopsy.
The biopsy is a procedure done at the hospital. They will sedate you a bit in order to keep you calm during the procedure. The doctor will insert a sort of long needle with pinches at the end, which will be inserted in direction of the liver, through the stomach, where they will pinch a few samples of your liver.
This will then determine the stage and grade of damage to your liver if any.
Also if fibrosis, or cirrohsis as set in.

Then you will be kepted at the hospital for a total of 4 hours, until you feel better, and they are sure that you won't bleed out. You will need to do nothing trenuous for the next 24 hours, then resume to his normal activity the next day. No lifting of course.

Recap:
1. genotype
2. viral load
3. iron
4. thyroid.
5. liver enzymes
6. stage of liver damage if any
7. grade of liver damage if any
8. fibrosis if any
9. Cirrohsis if any
10. If you qualify for tx.

If you should have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask me. One more thing, you are allowed to get a copy of all of his blood work and his PCR results.

Hope this helps you out. Good luck to you.
Mckenzie
One day at the time.

ps: if you should have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to write me a message.

always listen to Mckenzie she is the Pro here and our Queen, she will never mislead u. good luck on your journey and it will take a while to get start

Welcome Victory1! If you are looking for info, you've came to the right place. This sight is wonderful & puts a wealth of knowledge at your fingertips, the people here are just great! If you go to my profile I have a journal entry there where I put all the good links that everyone on here shares. Can learn all sorts of good info from them, feel free to cut & paste to your own page so you can check them out at your own pace. As far as expecting things to move along faster, well it took us almost 4 months of test & doctors visit before we finally reached the actual treatment stage. It's a long waiting game, which can get pretty frustrating, but in the end is good because in that time you are going to gain so much knowledge about this disease & treatment. And knowledge is power! Gatorbuzz is right, MacKenzie is queen here, she is a true asset to this sight & can probably answer any question you have. But we will all try to help you & are definately here for support. Best of luck to you. Keep us posted! Tincup

gosh seems like forever since ive been in your shoes, and i guess in dog years it really hasn't, but i can surely remember the feeling of being scared out of my mind...one of the best things you could have ever done for yourself is to come to this support group. I've met some of the nicest, sweetest folks here...and very informed too i might add...sometimes it isnt enough to have the best of health care or information if you must go through stuff like this alone...here you will make friends and find people who genuinely care...i did :)

welcome her new friend , just popping in to say we are here for ya !

WELCOME TO DS MY FRIEND !!!! AS YOU CAN ALREADY SEE WE HAVE A TON OF EXPERTS..ME.. I'M JUST AVERAGE BUT AM GOOD AT SUPPORT AND CARING FOR ALL..WE HAVE A KICK ASS FAMILY HERE AND THERE IS ALWAYS ROOM FOR MORE !!! :) Janet

hi and welcome Victory1,

yep, I'm no good at the technical aspects of hepc, i try to provide encouragement and a kind word to those that are hurting. sometime that alone can make someones day.

slow down a little and don't let your emotions get the best of you. nothing is going to happen over night. you have plenty of time to gather information and do what is best for you.

take care,
joe

Hi Victory! Great choice of name! I forsee Victory over Hep C in your future!

High Enz count would be your ALT and AST, most likely. Liver enzymes that when high, indicate liver being damaged by something.

My enzymes were high in March 2005, and my doctor did nothing about it. I did not get DX with Hep C until October 2006, and by then I was really sick. Too sick to do treatment, in fact.

I'm happy to say that with careful diet, supplements and other measures, I'm all better now, and the symptoms I had 2 1/2 years ago are gone, it took about 18 months for me to recover to feeling normal again.

So it is slow moving. Finding out about having it is traumatic! And many doctors now recommend a period of 6 months to adjust to the facts before beginning treatment.

Best wishes!

This is a great place to get answers and encouragement. It is true the disease is slow..for the most part. I had it for 29 years...and fortunately I had little liver damage. I am one who chose to do tx, and am very very happy I did. I am just now 6 months post treatment, and The virus is gone! I feel great...never knew how tired I really was! LOL! Just know one thing, there is nothing predictible about the disease and the treatment. Everyone is different, and everyone's body reacts differently. TX is doable and in my case worth it for sure. My decision was to go for the treatment. I wanted a chance to kill the virus and I did not want to risk any more damage. Some people choose not to do tx, but most do. There are alot of things you can do to get through treatment. Hang with positive people here on DS. It makes the world of difference. I have met several people here who will and are my friends for life even though we have never met in person! So keep positive, expect the best...and educate yourself. Good Luck!

Hep c is a slow moving virus so their is no hurry but it os a good idea to take care of it while your in good health. Just dont drink or take drugs, even over the counter and wath chemicals you come in contact with,barb

I agree with everyone else. You will get new info after blood tests for genotype, and biopsy to see how much damage, then decide what to do. I chose not to wait. I did tx, and now I am free of the virus. I was genotype 1A, supposedly the hardest to treat, and I beat it!! The waiting is the hardest part. Please keep us posted. Much Respect, Cathie

Welcome.
I read through what everyone else said but forgot most of it, so I'll likely repeat what the others have said.

First, don't worry about that viral load because it does not mean much at all. You can lower that just be cleaning up your life, what you eat stop drinking alcohol, and stuff like that. Your viral load becomes important only if you do tx and then you want that VL to go down quickly and then become undetectable. Otherwise it's just a number.

Let's see, what else? OK if you drink alcohol, stop. If you smoke, stop that too. It is supposed to give you better odds of clearing the virus on tx if you don't smoke.
Oh yeah, another thing. If you have a wee bit of excess weight, see what you can do about exercising some of it off. That excess weight is supposed to give you worse odds of clearing the virus.

Genotype 1A is the toughest to clear, with odds something like 60% or less, so you want to do what you can to be in the 40% group. Quit smoking and drinking, lose weight, and eat healthy LOL. Now how's that for a short list of things to do!

Yeah, you really need that biopsy. The gold standard is the one with the big hulking needle that quickly jabs into your body and grabs a little snip of your liver to see what's up in there LOL. It's really not as bad as it may sound, and it's over before you could sneeze. I just remember the sound of the needle from my biopsy, and found the dentist more traumatic! There are some new procedures that are not as intrusive to the body, but your dr can talk to you about what method should be used in your case to find out your stage and grade with regard to liver damage.
if you find that you have little or no damage or inflammation, you could decide to postpone doing any tx and instead just cleanup up your living to be more liver friendly. On the other hand, if the biopsy shows you have some damage/inflammation in the 2-3 range, you may want to consider doing tx.

Someone had mentioned that it may not even shorten your life, which is true. There are many people who have the virus and die WITH it, not FROM it. They never even knew they had it.

So sure you can live with the virus and never do tx! Tons of people have already decided that tx is just too rough to try, so they choose to cleanup their diet and live a liver friendly life.
But it all depends on the condition of your liver right now. It's not called the silent killer for no reason. You can have zero kind of symptoms but your liver is crap. So get your biopsy, then sit down with your dr to discuss all your results, viral load, genotype, stage, grade, and what would be best for you to do next.

Don't be too worried about all the waiting, in fact, get used to it. You will be waiting for this appt and that one, these results and the next ones. it's neverending. Just bring a bottle of water and a good book, and settle in for your turn.

There are lots of good people here with years of experience, so no matter what you find yourself up against, I am pretty sure that someone else here has gone through the same or similar.

To know the road ahead, ask the man coming back.

By the way, your viral load is just under 5 million. Anything under 2 million is considered low. Anything over that is considered high. But we've had people here with VL of 33 million and 90 million and more.

Now to put that into perspective. Let's look at the size of the Hep C virus. We will compare it to the Small pox virus, which is larger. 3,000 small pox viruses laid in a flat circle (no stacking) would be the size of a period in a book.

If you took one of them and made it the size of a brick, the cold virus would be the size of a blueberry and the Hep C virus would be 1/3 of that size. It is 30-35 nanometers across. A nanometer is 1/1,000,000,000,000 of a meter, which is about 39 inches. I don't know about you but I cannot conceive anything that small. How many of them would it take to cover the size of a period?

Point is that it's not going to kill you overnight, or in the next month or year. You have time to consider your options and decide what you want to do about it.

When I was diagnosed they told me that it generally takes 10 years from onset of symptoms if not treated to get cirrhosis.

I already had symptoms and was too sick to do treatment. So I reversed the symptoms and now I'm doing better. Now I'm waiting for a treatment that isn't so hard on the body!