Bradlybones "The Triple TX Train"
Thursday’s Daily Opening Spread 10/06/2011
Night before last I was thinking about how my new treatment was coming up, and about the folks here already on treatment and I couldn’t help but be excited about being a hepper today, right now in 2011.
Oh, I’ve been a hepper for a long time, just like you. I really don’t know how long, but I figure my ‘high risk’ exposures were between 1966 and 1973. I expect I was exposed back then, but still, I don’t know.
Honestly I don’t care. I’ve said many times that “I don’t care how I got it; I just want to know how to get rid of it.”
Well I’m happy to be a hepper today because now it looks like I may be able to use something effective to get rid of it.
And then I started thinking of all the time I’ve spent on hepper forums. I guess I started lurking in 2004. I was recently diagnosed and hungry for information. I thought I was going to die at any time. I had no idea what hepatitis was or what it did to you. Today, I know far more than I ever wanted to know; Far more.
Then I started thinking of all the heppers I’ve known over those years. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of heppers have dropped in to the forums on Delphi, and Facebook, and there were some on Yahoo for a while, and tons of blogs, and hours of clips on YouTube, phone calls, letters, presents exchanged, face to face meetings with folks I’d never seen, just said Hi to on the web; I started thinking about those among the heppers that I’d known that have had the same results as me. And I thought of the ones who had worse results, and finally I came to thinking of the ones that no longer have a voice on the forums, the ones that have been taken by the dragon.
For those folks, I prayed last night; for those who went before us and never had the chance that we have today. I prayed for their comfort, and asked for a little extra measure of ease if these souls are ever to be judged. I feel that the virus robbed them of any additional opportunities they may have had to ‘square things away’ and get their lives to a place they’d wanted, but the dragon got them before they could make changes, or get married, or have grandchildren. So I say give a bit of a break, they were swept away before their time. They never got the ‘second chance effect’.
Just like there’s no way to tell when I got the virus, there’s really no way to tell how many folks the dragon’s taken from us. We all know a few, add them up and that’s just too many.
That being done, I reflected again on how lucky we are. Check this out, we now have the PI’s, the protease inhibitors and they’re very effective for most folks. But right behind them are coming the Polymerase inhibitors; and an all oral, short-course, non-interferon based treatment. Folks, that’s exciting as hell. And they’re making huge progress in finding the weak spots on the RNA chain of the virus. And there might be a freakin’ vaccine soon.
I honestly think we’ll eradicate the virus in our lifetime if things keep going the way there going.
I also wonder why there are more scientists building military hardware than are finding new medicines. Taking life seems more important than saving lives on a world scale.
But that’s a thought I stopped and started to think of our family instead. I say family because we are. We have the same blood and it binds us just as fast and close as any other type of blood, maybe it bonds us closer. We treat each other with respect, we root each other on, and we pick each other up, we laugh and cry together. We reach out and we reach back. No hepper gets left behind.
This is the OOB family, with lots of previously treated folks, and lots of new folks’, lots of lurkers that have not joined us yet. We make the place special, not Hep C. Not the dragon. What binds us is that we’re family with a common enemy and a common goal. Our goal is to see all us get Hep C free and, to have as much fun doing it as we can. We’ve proven on a daily basis that we can have fun. Jeez, I can’t read more than two or three posts before I get my first smile of the day, and then just a few more and I’m laughing out loud.
I love it. I love being a hepper, here, right now, today and with you. I choose to walk down this road with you by my side. I love you, my family, my support group, and my friends. And I want for you what I want for myself - Victory, and along life filled with love and happiness.
I have the love and happiness already. Thank you OOB, I need you and you are there. You make me feel alive. And if God has a purpose for me, this is it. It has been revealed. I’m a hepper, I help other heppers. Thanks God, I like the assignment. I’ll do my best to do good work.
Bradlybones "OOB"
Night before last I was thinking about how my new treatment was coming up, and about the folks here already on treatment and I couldn’t help but be excited about being a hepper today, right now in 2011.
Oh, I’ve been a hepper for a long time, just like you. I really don’t know how long, but I figure my ‘high risk’ exposures were between 1966 and 1973. I expect I was exposed back then, but still, I don’t know.
Honestly I don’t care. I’ve said many times that “I don’t care how I got it; I just want to know how to get rid of it.”
Well I’m happy to be a hepper today because now it looks like I may be able to use something effective to get rid of it.
And then I started thinking of all the time I’ve spent on hepper forums. I guess I started lurking in 2004. I was recently diagnosed and hungry for information. I thought I was going to die at any time. I had no idea what hepatitis was or what it did to you. Today, I know far more than I ever wanted to know; Far more.
Then I started thinking of all the heppers I’ve known over those years. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of heppers have dropped in to the forums on Delphi, and Facebook, and there were some on Yahoo for a while, and tons of blogs, and hours of clips on YouTube, phone calls, letters, presents exchanged, face to face meetings with folks I’d never seen, just said Hi to on the web; I started thinking about those among the heppers that I’d known that have had the same results as me. And I thought of the ones who had worse results, and finally I came to thinking of the ones that no longer have a voice on the forums, the ones that have been taken by the dragon.
For those folks, I prayed last night; for those who went before us and never had the chance that we have today. I prayed for their comfort, and asked for a little extra measure of ease if these souls are ever to be judged. I feel that the virus robbed them of any additional opportunities they may have had to ‘square things away’ and get their lives to a place they’d wanted, but the dragon got them before they could make changes, or get married, or have grandchildren. So I say give a bit of a break, they were swept away before their time. They never got the ‘second chance effect’.
Just like there’s no way to tell when I got the virus, there’s really no way to tell how many folks the dragon’s taken from us. We all know a few, add them up and that’s just too many.
That being done, I reflected again on how lucky we are. Check this out, we now have the PI’s, the protease inhibitors and they’re very effective for most folks. But right behind them are coming the Polymerase inhibitors; and an all oral, short-course, non-interferon based treatment. Folks, that’s exciting as hell. And they’re making huge progress in finding the weak spots on the RNA chain of the virus. And there might be a freakin’ vaccine soon.
I honestly think we’ll eradicate the virus in our lifetime if things keep going the way there going.
I also wonder why there are more scientists building military hardware than are finding new medicines. Taking life seems more important than saving lives on a world scale.
But that’s a thought I stopped and started to think of our family instead. I say family because we are. We have the same blood and it binds us just as fast and close as any other type of blood, maybe it bonds us closer. We treat each other with respect, we root each other on, and we pick each other up, we laugh and cry together. We reach out and we reach back. No hepper gets left behind.
This is the OOB family, with lots of previously treated folks, and lots of new folks’, lots of lurkers that have not joined us yet. We make the place special, not Hep C. Not the dragon. What binds us is that we’re family with a common enemy and a common goal. Our goal is to see all us get Hep C free and, to have as much fun doing it as we can. We’ve proven on a daily basis that we can have fun. Jeez, I can’t read more than two or three posts before I get my first smile of the day, and then just a few more and I’m laughing out loud.
I love it. I love being a hepper, here, right now, today and with you. I choose to walk down this road with you by my side. I love you, my family, my support group, and my friends. And I want for you what I want for myself - Victory, and along life filled with love and happiness.
I have the love and happiness already. Thank you OOB, I need you and you are there. You make me feel alive. And if God has a purpose for me, this is it. It has been revealed. I’m a hepper, I help other heppers. Thanks God, I like the assignment. I’ll do my best to do good work.
Bradlybones "OOB"
