Public Service Announcement

Wow, thanks to Marie Baguette. She found a site that I didn't find, and I've been googling fairly obsessively. It is here. Thank you, thank you blogosphere, for your support and information. First of all, it is a more recent study than those I found, and while I was finding things that said "as many as 10% of patients with hepatitis C have no known risk factors", or "10-15% of patients have no known risk factors", this one says that 20-40% of patients have no known risk factors. 20-40%! And look at all those things that people did in the year they got infected - surgery, intravenous drips, intramuscular injections, acupuncture, manicures and pedicures. Wow. It recommends that this information is made more widely available.

Uh, yeah. That would have been nice. Who knew? I certainly didn't. I thought that Hep C was like HIV. That you'd have to pretty much know where you got it from - intravenous drug use, sex, etc. Not that you could have a small puncture wound with a presumably sterile needle and then somehow pick it up. Would it have stopped me doing IVF? No, probably not. It may have given me pause before doing acupuncture, I guess, given that that was really an unnecessary addition. Can't say I've had any manis/pedis in the last couple of years (pedis always made me a bit squeamish) but I can say I'm not going back again for a pedicure at least.

I wish they would make this information more available. It makes me want to start telling everyone to be careful out there. That, you know, infertility treatment isn't just hard on your wallet, your hormones and your emotions. It could open you up to other problems. Injectable medications aren't a no-brainer. Acupuncture may not be entirely safe. An IV drip for egg retrieval? Is it worth it all?

So, anyway, I am moving more towards acceptance. I am moving on from denial. I figure I have it, that this was not a false positive test. And strangely, the need to know where I got it from is abating. Could be the donor sperm, could be the IVF itself, could be the acupuncture. Could be something unrelated. I'll never know. Or at least, never be able to prove anything for certain. I can live with that uncertainty. It just means that life has dealt me a shit hand. Before infertility I'd probably have been more angry and more needy about figuring out where the infection came from. But now that I've been dealt the shit infertility hand, I've already gone through the "why me?" angst and I don't have the strength to go through it all again. Why me is just because sometimes shit happens. There's no rhyme or reason. Life just sucks major ass sometimes. Of course, maybe I just haven't hit the anger stage, or whatever the stages of grief are that you have to go through.

But, whatever, in two weeks I will know. I had my appointment with the internist yesterday, and he seemed like a nice guy. He is running a shit load of tests on me, some of which I'm sure have no bearing on hepatitis but he seems to be running them because he can. Or maybe he just wants every tiny piece of information possible before deciding on what treatment to give me, and wants to know if I am healthy enough to cope with the treatment, which is pretty nasty, let's face it.

So I have a different type of two week wait now. Not the two week wait for pregnancy test results but nasty disease test results. I'm sure I'll be every bit as anxious and distracted as I am before a beta test. I've already been mentally rehearsing the conversation with the big boss at work where I ask for reduced hours for interferon treatment, but let's hope it doesn't come to that, eh. I'd much rather do another IVF than waste more than 6 months injecting myself with really nasty drugs. At least I have the injection techniques down pat though, so that will help I suppose.