Hepatitis & Me�-- Introduction (Part One of Four)

Health officials can only speculate how many of us have hepatitis C and aren't diagnosed yet. The odds are about as solid as betting on snake eyes on a craps table.

They don't put it that way, but when really pressed, the American Medical Association and the Center for Disease Control will admit they don't have a clue. The agencies have a best guesstimate nearly four million Americans have the disease - and of those, 2.7 million are chronically infected.

Why should you care?
Hepatitis C killed about 10,000 Americans last year - more than AIDS - and it's now the leading reason people have liver transplants, according to the Center for Disease Control. It is commonly believed that there's no cure for the disease, although nearly one in five patients respond to the new forms chemotherapy.

The most obvious reason you should be tested is you might have the disease. It can sit in your system for decades, quietly killing your liver.

A lot of people die from it having never been diagnosed. They just drop dead for no apparent reason.
Worse yet, you may be spreading it to innocent, unsuspecting folks.

Why do I care? Hepatitis C and I are old traveling companions. We were formally introduced in a doctor's office in Astoria, Ore.

The doctor gave me six months to live. That was in 1994. Within a week I lost my life as I knew it. At work, the company said I was still in my probationary period, and things weren't working out. They didn't specify what wasn't right - they didn't have to.

My work was fine. I have all the right credentials and awards in my field. I guess it was something in my blood.
The woman I'd lived for two years with was more honest. She started packing her stuff the same day I got the news.
Depression? It was as evident as the pints of bright red blood I began vomiting. Fully convinced I was going to die, I started drinking heavily. It is the worst thing you can do for a liver disease.

I was rendered clinically dead four times over the next year. Probably the most dramatic episode was on a medivac flight to Portland.

I'd flatlined. One of the paramedics unhooked all the equipment and covered my face with a sheet. Shortly before we were getting ready to land, I sat bolt upright and told him I was hungry.

I'd been graying for a decade. A funny thing happened between here and that particular death of mine - all the grey hair went away. The tech said it was the damnedest thing he'd ever seen.

A lot has happened over the past ten years. I think I outlived the doctor who gave me six months to live.

I've been through a variety of treatment plans and am sitting a tickmark away from getting on the liver transplant list. I've just started my second round of chemotherapy.

It's a byproduct of cancer and AIDS research. Believe it or not, it's largely luck doctors started testing these treatments on hepatitis C patients. Because of it, the doctors have started to use another "C" word - cure - around me lately.

I've changed a lot because of The Disease. In its own way, it's been a good teacher. Hanging on the edge of life has shifted my priorities, my religion, and my overall outlook at life.

For one thing, I'm not afraid of anything these days. Death is one of those things that turns people inside out. One you've got the, "been there, done that" attitude with death, there's not a lot left to threaten you.

I used to worry about all kinds of things; my job, making the rent, the future, and what other people thought of things. In my current perspective, this stuff doesn't matter much these days.

Employment's a joke. People don't hire full-blown hep C cases. They don't because they are afraid of us, and we're lousy employees. I say that because I used to be the boss - and I wouldn't hire me.

I can't promise a boss I'll show up for work on a regular basis. And if I do, I wouldn't bet the farm I'll make it through the day. The disease does that. It's common to be sapped of all your strength for days, even weeks.

We're a known risk to the other employees. Granted, having somebody like me around is far less dangerous than having, say, an open vat of radioactive waste sitting open in the office. Getting hep C is harder than most people think.

So I live on disability. It's a lot less than minimum wage, but the rent gets made. Poverty doesn't bother me because my real needs are few - and they are met.

Stuff isn't important. From my perspective; it's just amassing the crap they'll be dividing at the will-reading.

What matters most is people, and the lessons you leave them. That stuff lives on a whole lot longer than what they'll get for hocking your toaster.

The whole business of give and take may be the stuff that binds the universe, but the written guarantees aren't worth the paper they're written on. Nobody really owes you anything, and if you repay anybody it's largely for selfish reasons.
That's pragmatic. It's existential. It's the kind of perspective you get when you can't bank on tomorrow.

Something like 500 people won't wake up tomorrow because of Hepatitis C. About the same number will find out they have the disease. It's killing more people almost anything else on the planet, and the scariest thing is most of the people who have it have no idea they carry it.

And are they infecting other people. People like you. Maybe you'll never have it, but increasingly, odds are you know someone who does.

It doesn't have to be this way, but it is.

E.D. Easley is a former editor and publisher with newspapers and magazines in Europe and America. He lives in Spokane, Wash., where he's undergoing treatment for hepatitis C.