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.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Staying Hydrated or The Water Dance

One of the simplest, most straightforward ways to try to moderate some of the effects of the drugs you take to treat your Hepatitis C is to drink a lot of water and stay hydrated. There are many recommendations as to the amount of water you should try to drink every day, but one of the most common recommendations is to drink ½ ounce of water for every one pound of your body weight. This is a simple, easy to remember formula that you can use to figure your optimal water consumption. Easy to figure; yes; easy to actually do every day, not so much.

I offer myself as an example. I am currently about 185 pounds. Since I get weighed every single time I show up for testing, I am a lot more aware of my weight right now, than I usually am. If you divide my weight by 2, you get 92.5 which is the number of ounces of water that I should drink every day to feel my best. Ninety-two and one half ounces is almost 3 quarts of water per day. That is almost twelve 8-ounce glasses of water, eight 12-ounce cans of soda or six 16-ounce bottles of water. That’s a lot of water to drink every day. The advice about drinking water also includes the warning that it is probably not a great idea to drink much water after about 8 p.m. or you have the chance to be up several times at night to go to the bathroom.

I get up every day around 6:30 a.m. I stumble downstairs, put a kettle of water on the stove and make a cup of green tea (about 8 ounces). I drink green tea because it is about the only way I can have any caffeine any more without completely turning in to a jittery wreck. I need caffeine, at least at the crack of dawn, because I am NOT a morning person and in order to communicate at even the most rudimentary level, I have to have a little. Then I read the paper, dress, eat a bit of breakfast, make my lunch and head out the door. By a touch after 8:00 a.m. I am at work.

This means that I have 12 hours to hydrate myself before I have to stop to avoid endless nighttime bathroom trips. So I have about 90 ounces of fluid to drink over the next 12 hours, about 8 ounces an hour on average. That’s a lot of water and a lot of times to remember to drink some. It’s easy to work for a few hours straight and forget to drink anything and then drink a lot and then repeat the behavior throughout the day.

This seems not so much a big deal until you consider two things. The first is that I have been given through the magic of heredity, the gift of a smaller than normal bladder (thanks mom). Ever since I was a little kid, I have had to use the bathroom more than the normal person. The second consideration is that I am a male over 50 years old. This is known as the enlarged prostate demographic. So I have a somewhat enlarged prostate pressing against my somewhat smaller than normal bladder. This results in a somewhat greater than normal number of visits to the bathroom throughout the day. Actually this means that if I drink the recommended amount of water every day, I am visiting the bathroom every hour on the hour.

On the bright side, you get to see a lot of co-workers regularly, and, if I bring my cup with me to the bathroom, I can drink a nice glass of water on the way out the door and both stay hydrated and set up my next visit to the loo. This is all relatively easy to manage on the job. I am in a building, the building has a bathroom, I visit the bathroom as needed. Outside of work it is not so easy. If I drink the recommended amount of water on the weekend or in the early evening when I am out and about, my recreation is overshadowed by the constant need to find a bathroom. One thing you can say about cities in the USA is that easily available restroom facilities are not high on the priorities of city planners, landscape architects, architects, or city governments.

We are all familiar with the pressing need to relieve oneself and the physical joy of finding that relief. Now imagine that scenario playing out several times a day during a shopping trip, a hiking outing, or a visit to a cultural event. That is what I call the water dance, or more accurately, the making water dance.

Staying hydrated helps your energy, staves off the feelings of nausea and upset stomach and gives your skin that healthy glow that fools people into believing you are healthier than you feel. I will gladly, on occasion, endure all the feelings of nausea or upset stomach if it means I can forget about having to plan my day around the length of time between bathroom visits and planning my daily route around available bathrooms. I’m sure I could go on longer about all this but, you guessed it, I have to go the bathroom. Where is my water glass…

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