It’s always heartening to see someone announce that they’ve been cured of hepatitis C. When that someone is high profile it gives the entire cause a little kick along. It’s good to have some media coverage talking about HCV treatments and their successes. Keeping the cause in the public eye is hard work in a time of constant media churn and change. The news cycle seems to have to attention span of a gnat - no offence to gnats intended!

When Pamela Anderson announced her hep C cure she did it with a bang. No “from the shoulders up” smiling selfie for our Baywatch star. She was proud of her cure, proud of the fact she’d beaten the dragon and proud of being on a yacht. (Naked. In Cannes. Excuse me while I wipe the pea-green envy from the corner of my mouth, I seem to be dribbling.)

Which led me to think ... what photo would you post to celebrate your cure? How could you get a photo to encapsulate the joy, excitement and pleasure of a victory against the hepatitis C virus? *

Where would you take it?

What would you include?

Who would be with you?

I think we should celebrate courageous and victorious moments like these. I think we should hashtag them.  #imcured or #nomorehvc spring to mind.

I thought about how I’d like to commemorate SVR12 if I’m lucky enough to make it. 

I still have most of my empty pill bottles. 24 weeks worth of ombitasvir/paritaprevir/ritonavir, dasabuvir and ribavirin. They’re in the shed holding small screws, nuts, washers and tacks. I could surround myself with them.

I could scatter all the paperwork that has accumulated over the past 12 months of pre-treatment, treatment and post treatment and recline on them like an odalisque (but I’d keep my clothes on. Some things are better left unseen).  

I could take a selfie with my specialist, my CNC and me (note how possessive I have become of them).

So many choices. I have another two or three weeks left to make my mind up.

How would you Instagram your moment of victory over hepatitis C?


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* I did have another thought, and that was a calendar of people cured of hep C. Naked. But that’s a blog entry for another day.