I am a 57-year-old white American male infected with Hepatitis C. I am involved in a controlled medical research study by Roche Pharmaceuticals of an experimental Polymerase Inhibitor (RO5024048 also known as RG7128) drug therapy for the virus. This document is the story of my illness and the experience of treatment. My lovely and pretty damn wonderful wife will be contributing her take on the experience as well.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Was It The Chocolate?

Valentine’s Night was a lot more like Halloween night, pain angst and tossing and turning. We had a lovely Valentine’s evening, my wife and I. We exchanged gifts, had pizza – not necessarily what some would call a romantic dinner, but we didn’t have to make reservations, we had a cozy romantic setting at home and we could take our time without the spectre of the hovering waiter and the waiting fellow customers hoping we were going to finish up and leave soon.

Among our gifts were the requisite chocolates which we sampled liberally after our grilled chicken, mushroom and bell pepper pizza. We eventually retired later in the evening and after falling quickly asleep, I kept waking up all night long.
First it was aching and pain all along my left side. So I rolled over, fell asleep and woke up with pain all along my right side. After a bit of short dozing on either side was interrupted by the pain, I tried sleeping on my stomach. Fine for a while until my back locked up on me. After stretching that out, I tried sleeping on my back to avoid sleeping on either aching side. That worked for a few hours until I woke up with my back aching, my sides aching and my legs stiff.

I finally broke down and took 3 200 mg ibuprofens…and eventually fell asleep. I know that ibuprofen is not thought to be good for the liver, but I can’t imagine that sleep deprivation is any better for you. I have never had that level of pain and tenderness in my muscles since having some morphine during my last bout of diverticulitis. I have noticed that the last few injections of interferon have been increasing the level of muscle aches within the first few days of the injection. Maybe that was the case. Maybe it was the sugar or caffeine from the chocolate? I don’t know, but I am not looking forward to tonight if it is anything like last night.

Definitely no Chocolate tonight.

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