Gregory M. Ledet

Today started off horribly.  The doorbell rang at 10:30 and I was still sleeping, seeing as I didn’t go to bed until 4am.  I knew my wife was downstairs, but I still wanted to see what was going on.  I made the first step and my feet slipped out from under me.  Down the stairs I went.

Not a good pic, but click for larger image

I screwed up my arms pretty good, but that’s just the part I can show you here.  My lower back and and tail bone are destroyed.  My neck is killing me.  It hurt like hell when it happened, and now it’s getting worse as everything tightens up.  I only thought that I wasn’t doing good with the treatment, now I have this to contend with.  Trust me when I tell you… I’m in a shitload of pain.  The best part about it?  The doorbell was UPS delivering more Pegasys.  I went through pain to take delivery of pain.  It was so loud when I fell down the stairs that the neighbors came running over to see if I needed help.  I couldn’t move for about 10 minutes.

While I was sitting here in pain I tried to get some things done knowing that I have company arriving tomorrow and I had a doctor’s appointment today at 3 and it was going to take an hour and a half to get to the doctor’s office.  This is where to good day comes into play.  The doctor’s appointment was my first meeting with the PA that will be taking care of me during my Hepatitis treatment.  It was also my first look at the blood work I’ve had done since I started treatment.  We got to the office and everything went OK at first.  We went over the CBC and CMP info and I was informed that my white count was a little low, but my AST and ALT were looking better!

Click the image for full spreadsheet containing values

For those of you that don’t know, the AST and ALT are liver enzymes. Liver enzymes allow doctors to learn about the health of your liver. There are thousands of these enzymes in the liver and blood stream, but two of them — known as AST and ALT — are especially useful for determining the severity of liver disease.  When liver cells are damaged, AST and ALT are “leaked” into the blood stream.  The amount of these enzymes give the doctor an idea of just how screwed up your liver is.  When the levels are high it causes concern because the liver isn’t functioning the way it should.  In simple terms: if AST and ALT are high, that’s BAD.  Liver enzymes are like golf scores.  By looking at the teal and orange lines in the chart above, you’ll get an idea of what my liver enzymes have been doing this year.  I started treatment on Nov. 20th, so they have gone down since then.  Click that chart and bring up the full numbers and the spreadsheet.  Lots of info in there, including the numbers that you need to make that chart look right.

So, now we know that my liver is working a little better because they’ve gone down since my last test.  This is a GOOD thing, but it isn’t what I wanted to know.  I wanted to know my Viral Load.  That’s the test that I needed.  It’s going to give me a number and that number is the amount of virus found within a given volume of blood.  My last test, in September, gave me a viral load of 1,720,000 IU/mL.  That mean there’s 1.7 million of those little viruses swimming around in that vial of blood.  I had the viral load done again on the 21st and, I’m happy to say, it came back UNDETECTABLE!  That’s right!  The HCV RNA was not detectable in a range of 43 IU/mL to 69,000,000 IU/mL.  It could still be there, but it’s less than 43 IU/mL.  The next test I’m going to have done will be able to detect it down to 10 IU/mL.  If it’s not detected there, then it’ll be save to say that I’m kicking it’s ASS.  Or at least, I’ve kicked at least 1,719,957 of their asses so far.

5 more months of treatment and it’ll be looking VERY good for me attaining SVR.  This is what this treatment is all about.  It’s about it working.  It’s about me beating it and not letting it beat me.  And this is also help for all of you out there that are looking into starting treatment.  There is hope!  I’m a guy that started treatment before and stopped after 4 weeks.  I had well over a year to let the virus mutate on me and build an immunity to the treatment, but it didn’t.  It’s still getting it’s ass kicked, and as am I.

Speaking of getting my ass kicked, falling down the stairs this morning really sucked.  My body is really starting to tense up and hurt like hell.  I’m eating pain pills right now like mentos just trying to take the edge off.  I mean hell… I sat on my nuts when I fell.  Yes, my full 240 lbs of weight landed on my testicles as I was dropping down the stairs. It still really hurts…  Not to mention that I popped a cyst on my kidneys when I fell (I have Polycystic Kidney Disease too) and I’ve been pissing blood all afternoon.

I’m still going to keep updating this blog, especially with info on my blood tests and everything.  But the question still remains… How do you feel my day went.  Was it a good day?  Was it a bad day?  Or, was it just Tuesday?