Keystone Kops

On a Hep C forum, someone asked a question about how important viral load numbers are. She had been told her numbers were too low for treatment. This matters because people have better chances for success in treatment if it is initiated early. The longer one waits, the more the liver is damaged. There is in fact no reason to base treatment on the numbers. That answer, and some of the process I describe below, makes me think of the old Keystone Kops, who ran around, got in each other's way, and made efforts which no rational person could have expected to be effective.


My diagnosis came in 1997, when I gave blood. The viral load test wasn't done until 2002, when I told a physician assistant, who was doing my physical, that I wasn't sure I had Hepatitis C, I might just have antibodies. I told her I thought the viral load test was never done because it was expensive, but also that since it wasn't done, I thought my physicians didn't think I had an active case. She ordered the test immediately. After that I was referred to the health plan's GI department. The doc there said I had live virus. She refused to tell me the reading on the grounds that people obsess over the numbers. She also told me more than once that treatment was reserved as a last ditch effort to keep people alive when they were waiting for a transplant. Years later the department was reorganized. I finally got treatment starting October 2008 and stopped June 2009 with no detectable virus. I have come to terms with my dismay over finding that in the time between 2002 and 2007, I had developed Stage 1 cirrhosis, and that many people in different parts of the country had been treated years before I was, as soon as HCV was diagnosed. Whether a person is treated for HCV depends on where they live and who is on their medical care team, not on their viral load or how sick they are.