I've resumed pegasys and knocked down shot #18 Friday evening.  So I
missed one shot of pegasys and about 2 weeks (so far) with the riba.
(I had a severe not totally explained allergic reaction that landed me
in the hospital for 3 days and had the doctors scratching their heads
and taking pictures of my rash.)  Well, maybe an hour after taking
this shot I noticed a mild case of pruritis (itching) setting in and I
let it go for a while before treating it so I know that the interferon
was part of it. That's common with alfa interferon 2a.   No rash has
kicked in yet but I'm on the oral corticosteroid prednisone (40mg)
clearing up the last remnants of the fun from last time.  I got this
cream from the doc called Absorbase that has worked wonders on my dry
skin.  It's great.  I also have a drug called Hydroxyzine HCL that has
pretty much taken care of the minor itching caused by the interferon
2a.  It's working well so far but needs a recharge every 4 or 5 hours.
I now think that possibly what got me in trouble before was I had
itching and rash caused by interferon and possibly riba as well and
then compounded that by having an allergic reaction to ibuprofen which
gave me hives and swelled my face up.  These symptoms are documented
and not uncommon.  I'm going to talk to my doc next week about
resuming the riba.  I'm feeling pretty damn good right now and want to
give tx my best shot. In fact I'm going out for a nice long walk in
just a few.   I've seen some other 24 weekers (I'm a 2) not doing well
lately and I want some insurance.  But I want to get off this f.cking
prednisone.  It caused my blood pressure to spike a little over normal
and I think caused my white blood cells to bounce down to 2.0 from the
already low tx levels while I was in the hospital.  That's too low
isn't it?  I had a qualitative test done Friday also to make sure I
haven't already relapsed and had other labs drawn as well.   My last
hemoglobin was  9.7 (10/27) not good but I'm doing fine.  I'll find
out more next week when I talk to the docs and check my Friday labs.
I want to procede cautiously or am I already being reckless?  I want
my SVR.  We'll get this thing worked out.

Don