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6708370 tn?1471490210

Still checking MELD scores?

Mine has been consistently a 7 since cured. Which is as good as my doctor or the lab worker drawing my blood. Wondering how others have fared or whether your days of online MELD calculators is over?
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683231 tn?1467323017
My doctor thinks the best indication of improvements with my liver would be an increase in my platelet counts. It was 80 to 90 before treatment and rose to 110 post treatment. So far at 3 years post I have had no further improvements in platelet count.

The only test that is keeping my MELD at 7 is my INR of 1.1 If it was 1.0 my MELD would be 6. My MELD was really always 7. I think I hit 8 but just for a little while.

How are you doing otherwise? I guess as long as we don’t get any further complications that would be a plus.

I was always waiting to find out “now what” as it seemed every year something else would happen. So boring is nice.

Best to you
I’m waiting for spring :-)
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That's interesting, flyinlynn. When I was really sick, my meld score reached 14 and I was pretty sure I was going to die soon. I have a MELD spreadsheet with every single one of my blood tests scored for the last 20 years.  My doctor seemed less interested in my platelet level than I have been but I was overjoyed when my platelet level reached triple digits. I am doing well, I guess, tho I no longer have a baseline for gauging just how well. Obviously, since I have been cured, my health is better and I don't worry about dying every day but during the process, I got older, so many of the things that cause me pain may be a result of the aging process. I dunno. A study of post-treatment patients seems like a really cool study for some post-doc to undertake but where's the money in that?
But since we are a new horizon in medicine the opportunity to see if and how cirrhosis is reversed I think there is a lot of scientific value in investigating that.

We study lots of stuff where there is no money like ecological issues polar ice reduction for example where there is not a direct gain but overall it gives understanding and can (we hope) guide policy that can save money and lives in the long run.

A study on cirrhosis regression which o have read some older articles for the NIH could give the medical community an idea of how to treat and follow this growing cohort of people with advanced liver disease who are now cured of hep c. Questions to be answered will we progress into decompensation  how often? Or will we improve maybe to F3 or even better? Our situation does impact the overall expenditures for the medical community and insures.

Kind of like flu shots they don’t want us to get them to be nice it’s to reduce national medical costs and lost work days.

It’s not about us it’s all about the bottom line.
I never realized your MELD had gotten that high. How long have you had cirrhosis?

I was tracked pretty closely from when I was diagnosed with hep c. I had biopsies every 5 years so sometime between 2003 and 2008 I progressed from F3 to F4.

Were you being followed in a similar way or was this all a surprise to you and you may have had cirrhosis for a while before it was discovered?

Great news your MELD has come down so much.

My doctor at the moment plans on having me get blood testing and abdominal ultrasounds every 6 months and upper endoscopy every two years. I was having upper endoscopies every year. She feels I am now at less risk of a re-occurance of esophageal varicies si that is good news as is my platelet count above 100.

So I guess for now we wait and see if we have additional improvements with time but al least we shouldn’t get any worse. Even our risk of HCC is reduced.
Yeah, it was pretty scary at the time. Fortunately, I met Howie who was such a treasure trove of support and information and reassurance. I will always remember the day he told my son, "Your Mom is not going to die from Hep C"  It was raining. We were driving Howie home from a support group meeting at UCSF where there were many people who were much sicker than me. I still have Howies' umbrella that he left in my car that day. It's just one of those cheapo foldouts but every time I see it, I think of him
Oh, and I have never had a fibroscan because my doctor could tell I had cirrhosis from palpitating my liver. Labs are all normal now though platelets are still lowish. And I still have ultrasounds and blood work every 6 months. But those days of treatment? I literally would pull my car over to access test results and knew that labs taken before 4PM would be available online for me by 10PM. Will never forget the email that my doc sent after failing treatment with Sovaldi. My son and I called it the "Greetings" email because that's how it began. Good times, hehe
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