1 year later

[Nanato6]

It's been almost a year since i found out hubby and i both had HCV. we are both clear now, all blood work was good! yippee! i go back in 8 months for blood work and fibrotest. hubby has app the end of this month. everything seems a little better!

funny thing, i don't drink alcohol, never have..the dr told me i could drink now as long as it wasn't every day!

 hubby's dr wanted him to have an endoscopy done, we told his pcp and he had an ultrasound so i guess he's good for now..

so thankful for this forum!

[Lynn K]

Endoscopy and ultrasound are very different. An endoscopy passes a fiberoptic camera through the mouth down the esophagus to the stomach. This test looks for enlarged blood vessels called esophageal varicies which can occur in cirrhosis and can be very dangerous as if these vessels become enlarged enough they can burst and result in a dangerous bleeding event. I don’t believe an ultrasound is capable of detecting esophageal varicies.

If he has liver cirrhosis he should have an upper endoscopy to make sure he does not have this condition. I was diagnosed with cirrhosis in 2008 and had an upper endoscopy that year and found small (grade one) varicies. Two years later we repeated the endoscopy and I had grade two varicies. I was checked again the next year and they found grade three varicies (highest score) so I underwent 4 upper endoscopies over the next four months to have banding procedures performed to eradicate those enlarged blood vessels.

I would recommend you go with his specialists recommendations regular general practitioners are not up to speed on treating patients with advanced liver disease you should follow his specialists advice. I’m assuming he was diagnosed F4 cirrhosis.

If he does have cirrhosis even though he is cured of hep c he should still have at least blood testing and abdominal ultrasound every six months. This is what I do and see my hepatologist once a year.

As far as alcohol if you had little to no liver damage before treatment less than F3 the recommendation from the AASLD is the patient can go and live a normal life as though they never had hep c so that would include occasional alcoholic beverages. But no one should drink every day

Congrats on being one year post treatment! Wishing you both the best! 

[Nanato6]

Than you for your reply,

That is what we thought too. He is a new pcp and very young, my daughter calls him the ken doll dr! He did change his regular meds due to some concerns we both had but was focused mostly on the medicare yearly exam..it would be good if the drs listened all the time! or communicated with each other...so at the end of the month we'll see what the specialist says, again.. God bless.