Friday, May 20, 2005

Hep C Update

The downside to proactively absorbing information at high rates is the low return on investment when listening to people attempt to introduce you to a topic. Cathy & I went to a mandatory Hep C class at Kaiser and were quite thoroughly bored since Cathy has already devored three books (not counting articles and pamphlets) on the subject. An aversion for public speaking aside, Cathy could have easily taught the class, and I could have pretended to teach it with just the transparencies provided.

We're at the stage where we need to determine a few things before deciding on a course of treatment (or not). Since Hep C has three genomes the treatment varies depending on the kinda of Hep C virus. Cathy is waiting to find out which genome her Hep C strain is before we decided what to do.

Oh, I mislead some of you in email conversations. I previously thought that Hep C is incurable; that is not exactly correct. It turns out that Hep C is very difficult to treat, and the cure rate is low (30%) for the most common viral genome and 70% for the other two variants. Not absolutely incurable, just not terribly likely. Now we're waiting to see exactly what kind of Hep C Cathy has before deciding what to do next.

3 comments:

  1. our prayers are with you.

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  2. Hey, have you guys talked to anyone at Church regarding this? At the potluck on Sunday there was quite a lengthy conversation regarding Hep (several members have had it and been cured). I didn't get all of the convo because I was kinda separated from the group (our BBQ is now relocated further back in the yard), but from what I gathered, it was a good convo with lots of good info shared. Just a thought as you pray and go forward... RCN

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  3. Actually, yeah... we talked with a couple elders and with the Wilsons. I understand Kenny managed to beat it with a year of shots.

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