Posts Tagged ‘Post Interferon Blog’

Post Interferon Headaches Good News Finally- Topomax – For Me At Least

Posted: March 12, 2017 in Uncategorized
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If you’ve read my blog for a while or just googled post TX, post interferon headaches, and found this blog, welcome, I went through interferon back in 2006-2007 and beat Hep C, and have never test positive since, which is considered cured thank God!

At the time it was an injection of interferon once a week and pills of ribavirin daily, and it went on for a year, and it was much more than flu-like symptoms, most obviously admitted by the medical community by the fact that within just a few short years of my completing this cycle of medication they were no longer offering it, but opting for a much shortened time line of medication, that not only offered a higher than the 50/50 rate of remission than my cocktail did, but also was closer to a 13 week, rather than 48 week I believe mine was. Anyway I’m not bitching about what my options were at the time. In the words of the 2nd President Roosevelt who served his term in a wheelchair, in secret I might I add “Do what you can, with what you got, right where you are.” My liver was failing, I was dying. That’s that.

After I was cured, I was left I was left with terrible headaches, a surprise side effect, that having conquered, my drinking, and drugging problem that had plagued, me that previous 20 years, and of course, cursed my family childhood years previous, I’d really was hoping for a fresh, clean slate to build my life upon, and when I went into the corporate world I was really thrown back when I found myself in extreme pain, several days out of the week, if not all the way through.

Eventually I found a few treatments, for me it was Prodrin and Sudafed that allowed me to push through the work days that have allowed me the last five years to have steady employment and build a successful sales career back up, but it’s just been fighting through steady headaches with Prodrin, which is a heavy caffeine and Tylenol mix, and then Sudafed is a decongestants and Sudafed is a vasoconstrictint so I believe that sometimes helps, but not all the time. But its made me very antisocial. I’m thought of as angry around the office, and I don’t make enough meetings, don’t like to go out, as a result. I truly have a life that revolves around the headaches as a result.

I tried several different combinations of medications to alleviate the constant pain and wrote about them in this blog  a few years back, off the top of my head, indomethacin works, but kills your stomach, constipation, ulcer-like pain, Zoloft, a slew of other antidepressants and the like, to no avail, for six months stints at a time. And a few months ago, my girlfriend suggested I try Topomax. At first I felt nothing, and it wasn’t until I got to the full dosage, but lo and behold, I am finally feeling a lot better.

Now fair warning, they say you get a bit of brain-fog, and feel dumb. This is not inaccurate. I do software presentations, and could not remember how to spell words that I clearly knew how to spell for a good two weeks. Also I couldn’t remember the name of a place I’d eaten at lunch for five years. Touch of mania as well, sending oddball texts to my boss for a week or so, but I’m way above quota for the year, so I’m in a good place politically for these kinds of antics, and the emotions are definitely starting to settle back down.

Anyway, I can honestly say its the first time since the treatment that I haven’t had a MAJOR migraine and that is huge news. In fact, its hard for me to remember if it was the treatments that caused it or my whole adult life because prior to the treatment i was an alcoholic addict, so I’d have to go back 25 years. before I wasn’t self medicated. I don’t remember having headaches leading up to the interferon, maybe one or two a week or so, i just remember feeling so happy that I was finally cured of alcoholism, and then BOOM finding out my liver was failing. It was that quick, it was just a few months after. It’s been ten years now. I’ve suffered with headaches the majority of that time.

Finally for the last three weeks or so I haven’t. I just pray with the Topomax it holds and I can continue to stay sober and continue to do God’s will and find out what the next leg of the journey is!

Crazy it took me that long to find the right medication. If anyone is struggling with Post Interferon or headaches after your hepatitis C treatments, please try to cycle up to 200 mg of Topomax with your headaches specialist or Neurologist. I thought I had tried everything and nothing worked till I got to that. I even paid $19,000 cash for jaw surgery, I didn’t need! It’s funny, not haha funny, but ironic I guess, not that isn’t the word, either. To a hammer everything looks like a nail I guess, basically every kind of Dr you see, thinks their particular field is probably what is causing your headache. I’m just glad I finally have some relief.

Big news on the book and the website coming soon. Very grateful as always to be ten years sober, and now to be pain-free, and of course with a full long life ahead of me!

Anyway, God’s Will not mine. I just hope that it holds!

Jared Bryan Smith
Author
Founder
Books4Free.com

My fasting experiment…

Posted: January 10, 2012 in Uncategorized
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Well I only lasted 32 hours, but I mean the results were tangible. I became hungry. haha… no I was definitely amazed by the clarity of my prayers, by the meaning and depth of reading scripture and there was a lot to be said for fasting overall. I still am skeptical of Free Chapel though to be quite perfectly honest.

I went there yesterday to pray prior to going down to do some step work with a sponsee at the 1 pm and low and behold there were, I’d say, about 20 people there already kneeling and praying at the front of the church. However I couldn’t help but notice the feeling of the whole place just being a big TV set. There was no cross, no alter, no stain glass windows, just a huge stage. Then to my left I heard some of those folks talking in tongues. I pretty much decided to end my fast and eat a cheeseburger right then and there. It was weird, and there was no church leadership, or even anything remotely christian about the praying…. I guess I’m just a little too skeptical still.

All that skepticism aside, I can’t argue that the Bible mentions praying and fasting quite a bit, more than I’d ever acknowledged before in my life and I’m glad to have brought it to my spiritual tool kit. I noticed in my meditation Sunday night after I was able to stay a lot more focused than usual… but then again I hadn’t really meditated in a long time anyway. Still, it put things into perspective.

I was able to recall just how powerful the feelings from last year were, and though similar, how far a cry this new woman was, and how both were but a taste of what is to come. Clearly I am not ready to receive the love God has in store for me at this moment but that doesn’t mean I won’t be one day in the future. Just that last year wasn’t right, and and this girl wasn’t the right one either, to be ok with that, to be patient, and that really I should have never let someone quite so sick get quite so close to begin with. One more set of lies I can no longer trust in myself I suppose, that I can date an active alcoholic because I won’t be stupid enough to develop feelings for her… nix that theory. I am just that stupid and more. No, I can’t fix people is part of the lesson. So don’t try and date or make love to projects that need fixing. I have enough fixing of my own to deal with, I need not take on any more challenges.

But after mediating, and praying yesterday, that hole in my heart was literally gone. So I guess a couple of lessons learned, calling the ball earlier reduces the pain, or the length of the pain, and also, fasting and praying is a great way to sharpen your connection to your higher power at any time. It filled the God sized hole right up in just over a 24 hour time frame. Reminding me of how human and delicate and savage I really am, and how much I really do need God.

Our program of AA is a spiritual program of action and that is one of the things I really enjoyed about fasting, is that it was an action event. Unlike so much else in the Bible, and outside of our 12 steps, it is something we can do, take action towards, and immediately begin reaping the benefits, feeling the results. if ever I begin to doubt God again I know I can use this tool, not eating, to immediately begin to feel his presence and force my hand to begin communicating. It reminds me of that saying, if you feel God is no longer in your presence, “Who do you think moved?” By fasting I get back to God, and I mean in a hurry. I must have prayed two dozen times, on my knees in that 30 hour period and my mind was crystal clear.

Regardless of my skeptical nature, I truly can not argue that Fasting has added an arrow to my quiver that I won’t soon forget.

I am grateful that pain of loss left me, grateful I start a new job next week, and grateful that joy and happiness are in my heart. I wish that girl the best, and I will remain her friend if she should call upon me, but I will not allow myself to get sucked back into an alcoholic sick situation. I will stay sober, and hopefully one day she’ll want sobriety based on my example. I wrote multiple letters I can’t send promoting AA and our way of life, but upon talking to my sponsor, which I already damn well knew, that is not how we operate. We are a program of attraction not promotion, so we’ll just have to wait by the sidelines, and move on, if it were right omnipotent God would make it so. As I’ve said before “If it’s right nothing in the world you do can prevent it from happening and if it’s wrong, nothing in the world can force it.” It is what it is, and I’m just grateful I can accept that more easily 5 years in than I could when I first got sober.

Jared Bryan Smith