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Personal Stories

Men Aged 50+

Here you’ll find participants’ accounts of hepatitis C diagnosis, living with hepatitis C, treatment and cure. The people and stories were carefully selected to highlight diversity in backgrounds and experiences. While this website is not able to tell every possible story of hepatitis C and treatment in Australia, it can show just how different people and their experiences are. In the stories can be found details of the many important concerns and circumstances our participants negotiated in living with and having treatment for hepatitis C.

The stories presented here rely on participant reports of overdose. Some experiences may not conform to medical definitions of overdose, and some responses described may not reflect medical advice.

While these narratives were written from the interview transcripts and rely on participants’ own words, some aspects have been paraphrased to improve coherence and readability. In making these changes we have worked hard to remain faithful to the original meaning and intentions. Some experiences may also be presented in other sections of the website, using more detailed quotations.

Cal
Cal was diagnosed with non-A, non-B hepatitis in the early 1990s, when he was 17. He remembers calling his mother straight away, and she started researching hepatitis and treatment options for him.
Chris
Chris was diagnosed with hepatitis C in the early 1990s. He was very conscious of the stigma surrounding the virus and chose not to tell many people about his diagnosis.
Dave
Dave found out he had hepatitis C after receiving a blood donation in the mid-1990s.
Derek
First diagnosed with HIV and hepatitis C in 1991, Derek was later diagnosed with hepatitis C again two further times (in 1998 and 2012).
James
James was first diagnosed with hepatitis C when he lived in the United Kingdom around 2000 but didn’t have treatment until he emigrated to Australia in 2015.
Marty
Marty was diagnosed with non-A, non-B hepatitis in the late 1980s after he donated blood and returned positive test results for what he was told was a ‘rare antigen’
Rusty
Rusty was diagnosed with non-A, non-B hepatitis many years ago
Scott
In his late thirties Scott decided to have a hepatitis C test after feeling that his ‘liver wasn’t quite right’