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Is there a "stigma" for Hep C positive people?
According to the site coordinator of the medical center where I'm being currently treated for Hep C, there is a "stigma" on Hep C positive people.
However I've found people outside the medical profession have never behaved toward me as if I have a "mark of shame" when they know I am Hep C positive. Some people I've worked with have been paranoid with unrealistic fears about catching the virus from me, but have never behaved toward me in a condescending way.
The exception is some of the staff at medical centers. I'm argued with as if I'm a moron every time I speak to the nurse who takes the blood from me during the current clinical trial (the doctors are not like that though). At another clinic called the Lair Center where I was treated twice with inteferon/ribavirin, some of the staff were even more condescending and were surprised when they found I was able to hold a decent job between the 2003 and 2012 treatments. The assumption seemed to be that I'm an inferior person. One nurse at the Lair Center for example believed without any evidence whatsoever that I'm a heroin addict, but I've never had heroin (nor cocaine, nor have I smoked crack) in my entire life.
However, I did acquire the virus (genotype 3a) when I was in my mid-teens in the early 1970s from sharing a needle with an heroin-addicted American Viet Nam veteran who was 7 or 8 years older than myself. His parents brought him to the small community in my country, a place where it was difficult to acquire heroin, to help kick the habit (his mother was Canadian and father American). He was selling drugs (not heroin, mainly LSD and meth) to high school kids and was encouraging us to inject the meth.
By the time I was 20 I had no interest in drugs and haven't even smoked pot since that time. I haven't consumed alcohol at all since I found out I have Hep C in 1998, and even during the 20 years before that during which time I knew I had some kind of liver problem, I had a few beers a total of 4 times (average once every 5 years).
It upsets me when I'm treated condescendingly in these medical centers because of some mistake I made as a teenager (influenced by someone older, at a time a couple of years after Woodstock when normal kids from good families in my high school were experimenting with drugs). I feel after being a honest law-abiding citizen and living a clean life during the decades after I got the virus, I shouldn't still be stigmatized when I go for treatment some 45 years later. The person I've been as an adult is very different from the naive kid from the small, somewhat remote community I was in 1971.
Has anyone else experienced this condescending attitude?
However I've found people outside the medical profession have never behaved toward me as if I have a "mark of shame" when they know I am Hep C positive. Some people I've worked with have been paranoid with unrealistic fears about catching the virus from me, but have never behaved toward me in a condescending way.
The exception is some of the staff at medical centers. I'm argued with as if I'm a moron every time I speak to the nurse who takes the blood from me during the current clinical trial (the doctors are not like that though). At another clinic called the Lair Center where I was treated twice with inteferon/ribavirin, some of the staff were even more condescending and were surprised when they found I was able to hold a decent job between the 2003 and 2012 treatments. The assumption seemed to be that I'm an inferior person. One nurse at the Lair Center for example believed without any evidence whatsoever that I'm a heroin addict, but I've never had heroin (nor cocaine, nor have I smoked crack) in my entire life.
However, I did acquire the virus (genotype 3a) when I was in my mid-teens in the early 1970s from sharing a needle with an heroin-addicted American Viet Nam veteran who was 7 or 8 years older than myself. His parents brought him to the small community in my country, a place where it was difficult to acquire heroin, to help kick the habit (his mother was Canadian and father American). He was selling drugs (not heroin, mainly LSD and meth) to high school kids and was encouraging us to inject the meth.
By the time I was 20 I had no interest in drugs and haven't even smoked pot since that time. I haven't consumed alcohol at all since I found out I have Hep C in 1998, and even during the 20 years before that during which time I knew I had some kind of liver problem, I had a few beers a total of 4 times (average once every 5 years).
It upsets me when I'm treated condescendingly in these medical centers because of some mistake I made as a teenager (influenced by someone older, at a time a couple of years after Woodstock when normal kids from good families in my high school were experimenting with drugs). I feel after being a honest law-abiding citizen and living a clean life during the decades after I got the virus, I shouldn't still be stigmatized when I go for treatment some 45 years later. The person I've been as an adult is very different from the naive kid from the small, somewhat remote community I was in 1971.
Has anyone else experienced this condescending attitude?
Yes, HepC does carry an unfortunate stigma usually by the uninformed and the ignorant. Some people think that all HepC people are dope fiends and that's simply not true. Another belief is people catch HepC because we are dirty people who live in trailer parks and rah rah, rah. None of it is true! When somebody treats me in a condescending manner I explain the facts to them. If they don't listen, I tell them off with a swiftness!!!
There is a stigma that hep C infected people all got it from shooting drugs. The truth is many did not, and many in the US got in during the Vietnam era from jet airgun inoculations given in boot camp.
It really doesn't matter how anyone gets sick, it matter that they be given compassionate care and treatment. Be kind to yourself and others and forget about that stupid stigma, if you can.
It's not your fault that you caught the virus.
It really doesn't matter how anyone gets sick, it matter that they be given compassionate care and treatment. Be kind to yourself and others and forget about that stupid stigma, if you can.
It's not your fault that you caught the virus.
With the strength of the members on here I took it upon myself to educate people when I was confronted with the attitude you mention.
Once I did that I discovered an alarming number of people (even those in the medical profession) didn't really know much of Hepatitis C.
__________________________
Even though there is the stigma others mention I'm not sure how often I hear presence of the virus being called "HCV positive."
Once I did that I discovered an alarming number of people (even those in the medical profession) didn't really know much of Hepatitis C.
__________________________
Even though there is the stigma others mention I'm not sure how often I hear presence of the virus being called "HCV positive."
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