Hi Lloyd,

I am a HCV patient and wrote a letter several years ago that you published on your site. It has now been four years since my treatment and the discouragement and dissatisfaction with my treatment and the medical industry on the whole has not improved one singe iota.

Around about the time I completed my Interferon treatment I began experiencing muscle and joint problems. Since my mother and other family members suffer from both RA as well as Osteo I chalked it up to my genetics. I lumbered along for about a year without much relief and finally asked my primary care doctor to refer me to a Rhuematologist. I have been seeing him for over three years now and have controlled the pain and malaise that were the defining issues of my life. But at a huge cost, I might add. I now take ten mg of Oxycodone IR every six hours.

On my last visit, my doc (Gary Silverman D.O.) engaged me in a conversation about the Interferon. His statement to me was simply that his colleagues were starting to document that Fibromyalgia (or symptoms-like) was being seem more and more in former Interferon patients. It had been discussed at one of their meetings. Since Doctor Silverman is wholly committed to the use of natural remedies and pain management, I felt vindicated in a great many ways. His point, and valid as it is in my world, is that chronic pain is a life altering condition. That regardless of the true source of my condition, since I had an improvement in my lifestyle, and the pain was abated, I was more functional on a great many levels, than I would be without the drugs.

Granted, a morphine drug is difficult to manage. And I have had my share of problems. But don't you find it interesting that doctors are beginning to question the aftermath effects of Interferon? I know I do.

Miriam L .