When I was diagnosed with Hepatitis C as a wife and mother, I was devastated. The best treatment available at the time was a 48-week course of injections that sometimes caused suicidal thoughts and had a 40-percent success rate.
Then I started hearing about new antiviral drugs in the pipeline to treat my disease. My doctor advised me to wait for the new drugs if I could, and I was prescribed the antivirals soon after they came to market.
Before the drugs, I underwent a procedure to save my liver just eight weeks after the birth of my sixth baby. After a month-long hospital stay, I was sent home on oxygen and in severe pain, fighting for my life. I was unable to care for my children, or help my husband with his business.
My sickness had a far-reaching ripple effect. My husband had to take off work and the business suffered. Our employees’ hours were cut, and the community had half a business rather than a thriving one. We paid less in taxes, contributed less to our church, and spent less at the grocery store.
We are just one family struggling with sickness. Multiply that by the millions who live with chronic illness every day. This is why I am so thankful for medical research – those drugs saved my life and gave six kids their mom back.
I cannot convey the relief we felt when the antiviral drugs came to market. We knew that these new drugs were going to kill the virus that was killing me.
But there was a problem: Health insurance companies were denying the claims of thousands of their policyholders with Hep C. For some, they just said “no.” For others, they told them that their claim would only be approved if they got sicker. Thousands of people just like me were suffering from an illness. We knew that it would be painful, and that it would get worse, and that something could be done to stop it in its tracks, but that it wasn’t being done.
My story had a happy ending. I applied to a patient program and received my drugs in the mail less than two weeks. After three months of pills, I was cured. But for thousands of others, action needs to be taken. Insurers should not be allowed to deny patients access to medicine that will permanently cure their disease, or to tell them that they don’t qualify because they aren’t sick enough.