Interferon-free treatments
Although one sentence here is a bit misleading: "Interferon is a fierce drug". It may be, but I find it to be almost tame compared to incivek, although your mileage may vary, and it depends on what kinds of side-effects you find more nasty.
But yes, I am a bit pissed off about possibly having just missed an easier treatment. Incivek may be worse, but only a fool would forego a chance to give one of these motherfuckers up if they could.
Monday, July 9, 2012
Sunday, July 8, 2012
On the 19th week of treatment, my dear meds gave to me...
...a whole lot more of the same: mild nausea, abdominal aches (liver region), skin problems of all sorts, etc. A new development, however, is a pain in the ass (if my head is an ass): ALOPECIA.
I had started losing a bit of hair halfway through treatment but the process has accelerated now. I lose a handful each time I take a shower, and the top of my head has some rather silly-looking bald streaks by now. Apparently, this is due to interferon, which affects hair follicles. Also, it is supposed to grow back when the treatment is over (unlike hair loss due to cancer chemotherapy, which is largely irreversible), so unless I shave what I have left off completely, a couple of months after the treatment I should have a natural feathered do, multilayered!
I am almost at the point where I can write objectively about incivek--being able to separate its side-effects, now gone, from those of the other two meds. Soon! But, in a bit of good news, my hemoglobin is up to the point where my blood can actually leave stains. A month ago or so, my bloodstains washed out without a trace in laundry; not any more. (That was the time when my rashes bled a lot...and before then, when my nosebleeds were haunting me as well).
Of course, currently I am not doing much of anything but taking my shots and eating my ribavirin twice a day, and keeping my fingers crossed that viral levels will still be undetectable on Aug 10th. Chances are good; general success rate for the therapy is something like 78%, but that includes non-responders, and those who have missed their meds repeatedly, etc. I would like to see statistics that show success rate for those like me who were diligent about their meds and whose viral loads were undetectable at both 4 and 12 weeks--that is, a Bayesian estimate, adjusted for known conditions. Of course, I cannot find any information of this sort.
And, an article I'd found, dating from Apr 25th, said that Vertex were at the time in the middle of Phase 2B testing for incivek and Hepatitis C-1 (which is what I have). No wonder I didn;t have to pay for it: I was, after all, a guinea pig, although not one of the brave Phase 1 testers.
I had started losing a bit of hair halfway through treatment but the process has accelerated now. I lose a handful each time I take a shower, and the top of my head has some rather silly-looking bald streaks by now. Apparently, this is due to interferon, which affects hair follicles. Also, it is supposed to grow back when the treatment is over (unlike hair loss due to cancer chemotherapy, which is largely irreversible), so unless I shave what I have left off completely, a couple of months after the treatment I should have a natural feathered do, multilayered!
I am almost at the point where I can write objectively about incivek--being able to separate its side-effects, now gone, from those of the other two meds. Soon! But, in a bit of good news, my hemoglobin is up to the point where my blood can actually leave stains. A month ago or so, my bloodstains washed out without a trace in laundry; not any more. (That was the time when my rashes bled a lot...and before then, when my nosebleeds were haunting me as well).
Of course, currently I am not doing much of anything but taking my shots and eating my ribavirin twice a day, and keeping my fingers crossed that viral levels will still be undetectable on Aug 10th. Chances are good; general success rate for the therapy is something like 78%, but that includes non-responders, and those who have missed their meds repeatedly, etc. I would like to see statistics that show success rate for those like me who were diligent about their meds and whose viral loads were undetectable at both 4 and 12 weeks--that is, a Bayesian estimate, adjusted for known conditions. Of course, I cannot find any information of this sort.
And, an article I'd found, dating from Apr 25th, said that Vertex were at the time in the middle of Phase 2B testing for incivek and Hepatitis C-1 (which is what I have). No wonder I didn;t have to pay for it: I was, after all, a guinea pig, although not one of the brave Phase 1 testers.
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