Had a good week really, the improvement over the last few weeks has continued.

Physically nothing much has changed:

tired - check
sore eyes - check
dry mouth - check
insomnia - check
face flaking like a good un - check
icthcy scalp - check
aches and pains - check
pounding headaches - check
foggy mind - check
little appetite - check
etc etc - check

All much the same as before, just minor stuff really which on its own would be nothing, added all together its something but to be frank not that much. I’ve been in much worse states than this by my own hands

Mentally things are on another level. At my lowest point I just decided I didn’t want to feel this bad for so long, so I decided not to. I wouldn’t under estimate the role of a positive mental additude on treatment, it can make a difference.

Lets get down with some jargon.

As a geno 1 tomorrow I have my 12 week PCR, thats polymerase chain reaction test which is a fancy way of saying they take a bit of your blood and run it through a sequence of processes which amplifys the hep c virus so that they can accurately measure it [animation here]. What the test is for is to look and see if I achieve EVR [early virological response] which is considered to be a 2 log drop [a fancy way of saying go 2 decimal places to the left] in the number of hep c virus I have in my blood. In an ideal world we would hope for the virus being undetectable [you know can't find any :)] but this can depend on the sensitivity of the test as to its accuracy.

The reason we need to establish if EVR has occurred is that if it hasn’t there is little point in continuing treatment. Very roughly if you don’t get a 2 log drop at week 12 you have about a 1% chance of SVR [that be a sustained virological response or another way of saying the virus is undetectable 6 months after completing treatment], those odds aren’t good enough to continue treatment. These are my figures so don’t quote them but I work on undetectable at 12 weeks giving an 80% chance of SVR and just a bare 2 log drop cutting odds to about 20%, 20% is good enough for me, I beat those kind of odds for fun.

Its an interesting time, I have in many ways concentrated on these first 12 weeks hoping to give myself the best chance of being undetectable. To a large part this is out of your hands, many factors outside your control are involved, but lets be realistic…if you think that nothing you can do will influence the outcome then you really are in trouble. Life is about influencing outcomes.

While trying not to think too much you have to run a few scenarios through your mind. For me undetectable or not achieving a 2 log drop are the “cleanest” outcomes, the difficulty will come with just achieving a 2 log drop. A few reasons for this, one of course being motivation but in the UK at least hep c treatment is somewhat a “painting by numbers game”. There are official guidelines set down [see http://www.nice.org.uk/ ] which in brief say geno’s 1’s get 48 weeks treatment assuming they have a 2 log drop at week 12, sounds simple huh? Its a little too simple for my liking. In theory someone could go undetectable just hours after starting treatment and somebody else could just make a 2 log drop at the 12 week mark, the fact they get the same treatment seems just a little bizarre to me. There are schools of thought that believe that treatment length should be at least 36 weeks after going undetectable, that sits well with me but how easily that is in practice….well I hope I don’t need to find out.

So in brief, been a good week, got a big day tomorrow, life is good.

Oh and BTW I have my cancer check the following day, more about that later. For those of a sqiemish nature I will be talking about liver cancer, if seeing the words liver cancer upsets you don’t read it. TIA.

PS - I know my spelling is awful, if you are smart enough to know a word has been mispelled you should be smart enough to work out what it should be. Next person who contacts me about spelling will get hunted down and I will personally twist your nipple until it comes clean off, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

PPS - Tetchy, me? Nah.

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