| Learning Objective #1: Identify strategies of dealing with three (3) common symptoms associated with hepatitis C | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Explain the difference between the clinical gaze and the lived realities of symptom distress |
Complicating their experiencing of these symptoms, for several study participants, was their prior history of injection drug use. For these individuals, treatment modalities for hepatitis C often triggered feelings associated with prior injection drug use. Hepatic encephalopathy (“brain fog”) was especially distressing as it mimicked the fogginess associated with illicit substance use.
Because of their often disabling symptoms, participants were struggling to plot a course through the health care system. Methods for coping with symptom distress involved standardized medical treatment as well as complementary modalities. Alternatives to mainstream medicine, including herbal remedies, meditation, yoga and vitamins were found to be helpful by several study participants. However, fatigue associated with hepatitis C, as well as socio-economic factors such as poverty and homelessness, precluded the integration of these complementary modalities for some individuals.
Some study participants were openly antagonistic towards the medical industrial complex, critiquing pharmaceutical companies (“they're using us as guinea pigs”) and physicians (“they're just used liver salesmen”). Regardless of their feelings towards the medical establishment, the majority of study participants recognized the lack of resources available for people living with symptomatic hepatitis C. One study participant noted that “it makes all the difference if you've got the ‘i' or the ‘c' between the h and the v.”
Moving from the clinical gaze (Foucault, 1973) to an exploration of the lived realities of symptom distress, this presentation highlights the dialectic experience of maintaining personhood within the “medical industrial complex.” The findings of this qualitative research study, including words of the study participants, will be contrasted with published textbook material and quotes from pharmaceutical brochures relating to hepatitis C.