On a sticky Sunday night at the Continental Club in late June 2005, I drank a Negra Modelo, my drink of choice. It tasted wonderful, cold and bubbly, and set my two-beer buzz just right. I put the empty bottle on the bar as my boyfriend swung me out to the dance floor while Heybale played. We left the nightclub not long afterward. Little did I know that was to be my last beer.
I’d known I carried the hepatitis C virus since sometime in 2000 when a routine screening revealed it in my liver. At the time, my levels were stable, but my doctor suggested I keep an eye on it and get tested regularly for it. I took note but didn’t listen to her advice. It took a new boyfriend to prod me into action.
“How are you now?” Mike asked.
“Dunno,” I shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”
“Well, you should go find out.”
His words had an unspoken “before you get really sick, dummy” sound to them. I was miffed for about eight seconds but called my doctor for an appointment the next morning. Several days later, my tests showed elevated liver levels. I went in for a liver biopsy six days later. Within three weeks, I began a 48-week regimen of weekly interferon injections bolstered by twice-daily rounds of ribavirin. It was vile.
This is a supreme irony for hep C patients like me who contracted the virus through intravenous drug use. Between 1979 and 1984, I had a nasty speed and cocaine habit going. It wasn’t as bad as some, but it was worse than others. In 1984, I’d stopped shooting speed and cocaine. Just quit. No rehab or program or intervention, just disgust with my life. In treatment for hep C, I had to learn to inject myself with interferon. “Shooting up lessons,” I joked to my friends, when I had to attend a demonstration of how to stick myself with a needle. Again.
Treatment started in early August of last year. Within two weeks, the side effects kicked in. I ran a fever, was sleepless at night and tired during the day. Being in the sun drained me of energy, so I darkened my home as much as possible. If I drummed up the stamina to go out at night, I was tuckered out between parking the car and walking into the club. I couldn’t drink, so the fun of that two-beer buzz disappeared. My hair thinned out noticeably.
My immune system was so suppressed I caught a variety of strange conditions. I had anemia. A metallic taste in my mouth dulled my appetite for anything other than Blue Bell ice cream. My nose bled. A horribly itchy skin rash developed over about 70% of my body, then dried and cracked before it healed over four months. I didn’t want Mike to see me like that, so I stopped staying overnight with him. At least I didn’t suffer from depression.
Tuesdays were the worst because I did my injections that evening. The thought of having to inject myself made me physically ill. All those years of shooting speed and coke I never minded it, so why was this different? Because every shot felt like punishment. The disembodied voice of judgment meted it out in my head weekly like a hellish pronouncement from some Stephen King novel: Take your licks for stupidity, fuckhead. For the next three days you’re gonna feel like hammered shit just to remind you about your dumb behavior 25 years ago.
On the first Tuesday in July 2006, I took my last injection while sitting in my vacated condo on Town Lake because I didn’t want to haunt my new house with old ghosts. Afterward, I packed up the last few items remaining and took them to my car, leaving the place that had been my home for 12 years for the last time. I settled in the car and turned on the engine. The radio came on at the same time.
“It’s July the Fourth,” chirped the deejay. “Happy Independence Day!”
I leaned on the steering wheel and cried.
This article appears in November 24 • 2006.