A Week's Time

I promised myself that I’d keep somewhat of a daily journal going through this treatment process; I’m not doing all that well so far.

The day of my first injection wasn’t all that bad. It was the first time ever that I’ve not associated (or had a hard time not associating) needles and injections with pleasure. For an hour my body kept telling me something good was going to happen. Not the case. A couple of hours after the first interferon, I felt a little dizzy and maybe a little sick to my stomach. I went to bed about two hours later and then at 2am, I woke up feeling like I had a pretty decent flu coming on. I couldn’t get back to sleep and finally did so at about 7am, sleeping until 9 and then getting up to feel it out.

The day was something else; I felt sick. Not dope sick, sick, but just sick. To be perfectly honest, it was much easier than I anticipated. At 10am I started the Ribavirin. Three in the AM and two in the evening. The Ribavirin feels a lot like the interferon, but not quite so intense. At the end of my first day, I felt pretty sick. After sleeping through the night, I felt pretty damn good. I woke up and ate, took my Ribavirin and went about my day like I normally do. As the days go on, it gets a little easier. Now, when I wake up, I feel nothing until I take the Ribavirin and as long as I take it after eating a fairly large meal, it’s not all that bad.

I can handle this for six months. The bottom line is that the treatment is absolutely nothing compared to kicking dope, and I’ve done that one plenty. I’m probably speaking up a little too early, at least as far as my symptoms are concerned, but for now I’m thinking this is a piece of cake. I’m still able to pull of 60 hours a week and I’m easily able to continue working out daily as I have been. In fact, the exercise could very well be why I only feel a small amount of nausea, and not much else. I’ll hold my breath, something tells me there’s more to come. My next injection is on Monday night, we’ll see how it goes…