started viekirax + Exviera + riba

[hepcatUK]

Hi, my first post here so hello  . I'm type 1a and started treatment for the 1st time last thurday...feeling a bit yuk with thick head/headaches, dizzyness, feeling a bit seasick/off balance...yesterday the whites of my eyes were yellow but not too bad today but this morning my skin looked quite tanned/yellow ( I've pale complexion usually) fibro scan 11.6 kpa last month..rang my hospital and they told me to just sit it out till Tuesday when my care team will be back from the weekend break but it seems to be settling down now anyway with the help of lots of water, anyone else here been on the viekirax + Exviera + riba treatment??

[Philadelphia]

Yep, me. Got hammered by ribavirin in the first few weeks, sick, nauseated, tired )  Turned yellow (about 5 or 6% of us do that) but went back to my normal colour. At one point I had a bilirubin count of 152 (!!!!).

Keep a close eye on your numbers, they should start to settle by 4 weeks in.

I blogged the entire treatment. If you want to see how I was feeling early on, go read the March/April entries in my blog. Link below in sig.

[hepcatUK]

Thanks for your reply Philadelphia...I am freaking out out the yellow a little bit so it's a bit of a comfort to hear this can happen, from what I can gather the treatment viekirax + Exviera that I'm on is different to the Viekira Pak treatment and so far haven't found anyone whos been through the whole course...thanks for pointing out your blog to me, I'll have a read now

[Pete]

Hepcat - Good luck with your treatment.  Turning yellow sounds like jaundice.  No? Are your LFT's hangin' in there?  Do be careful and keep a close eye on your tests.

Philadelphia - How was it determined that you qualified for 24 weeks of Viekira Pak / Riba?   152 Bilirubin? Your liver must have been right on the brink.

I'll check out your blog.

[Philadelphia]

Peter, I started treatment with Bili that was between 28 and 40 depending. It jumped to 152 after 2 weeks of treatment. A dose reduction of riba may or may not have been responsible for it settling down to somewhere atound 40-50 throughout treatment. Last test 12 weeks post treatment had it at 19. One point out of the normal range. My treatment team were very cautious when it shot up and I was whisked in for a range of tests and scans. Scans showed nothing terrible, bloods stRted to settle. I stayed on weekly tests for a month though.

[hepcatUK]

Hi Pete, thanks...I'm still very much at the learning stage when it comes to bloods etc so no idea about 'LFT's'....I'm sure it'll be like a second language soon enough!! at my last blood count before I started treatment it was
VL 7
ALT 108
Platelets 104

my 'yellow look' seems to be going up & down, some kidney pain this morning...it;s gonna be a long 24 weeks!!

I loved reading your blog Philadelphia!!

[Philadelphia]

LFTs are liver function tests.

The ones people generally keep an eye on are ALT and AST. Basically, they are enzymes that "leak" out of your liver into your bloodstream and they are a sign of current liver damage. ALT is more specific to liver damage, whereas AST can be caused by a number of things *including* liver damage. Your lab reports will have a range that they consider "normal" and your LFTs will be compared against that range.

If you are yellow you'll also want to watch your bilirubin - which you already know.

Because you are on ribavirin, keep an eye on your haemoglobin numbers. Riba causes haemolytic anaemia in many people - kinda blows up your red blood cells. So don't be surprised if they carefully watch you for anaemia. You'll know it yourself - you'll be short of breath and feel that you just can't quite get enough oxygen. Stairs will be a challenge and you'll find it difficult to exert yourself. You'll be tired. Weary.

Those among us who are a tad obsessive (and also who have been pretty sick) watch our GGT, AFP, albumin, INR and platelets with an eagle eye too.

While your platelets and ALT seem to be consistent with liver damage (ALT too high, platelets too low) your  VL - I assume viral load? - result is odd, unless it is a log. In the olden days they used to express viral loads as logarithmic numbers.

Thanks for the nice comment re my blog. I'm waiting for my 24 week post treatment results before I write another post, although I could easily do one about the Zen of Waiting. Or the Anti-Zen as it is at the moment.

[hepcatUK]

haha I can well imagine the 'AntiZen'  good luck

Thanks again...I will swot up on everything, I was told VL = viral load of 7 million + which I'm told is high but doesn't mean much...anyway...today I am trying to get my head into thinking that all the yukiness and unpleasantness of these pills is showing that they are doing something and if they're taking the wind out of my sails they must be kicking the **** out of the hep c 

for the few hours I slept for last night I dreamt I was a dwarf and it was illegal for dwarfs to drink fruit juice because it turned them aggressive ...weird...maybe I should ponder the meaning behind that dream  ...then maybe not lol

[Philadelphia]

I had some very weird dreams. Once I dreamt about meeting a past Prime Minister at the bottle shop while I was on VP. Seeing he had been dead for a few years it seemed unlikely.

Ah yeah, a VL of 7 million sounds more like it! Viral loads change, often dramatically. They're odd things. Mine went from 700,000 to 350,000 in three months with no rhyme or reason. I hadn't started treatment, it just happened.

You will feel a bit crap, probably. I found the first month tough. But it's worth it. It honestly is.

[hepcatUK]

OMG....I hope I don't have any Margret Thatcher dreams.....eeeeeeeeekkkkkkkk 

[Philadelphia]

lol - do report if you do!