szozu

I remember someone else here posted about seeing changes in old scar tissue.
I've seen some dramatic changes and it's been confirmed by the nurse who
draws my blood, my doctor and my husband. It's particularly evident over my
veins and it appears that not only the skin, but also the vein underneath
have been affected. My veins were originally pretty much invisible, leading
to much difficulty with IVs and blood draws. Now I have lumps and/or purple
or brown scars in all the places I have ever had a venipuncture, including
some where I only had one or two attempts! My question is, does anyone knows
how this change in ancient scar tissue relates to the supposed improvement
of fibrosis in the liver? I wouldn't want to think that my liver looks
anything like my arms! Or is this conversion into hypertropic scarring the
beginning of some sort of reduction process?

BTW, this has nothing to do with weight loss making scars or veins more
visible. I had lost weight on tx way before this happened and in fact, had
regained some before this began occurring. I think I started seeing this
around the sixth month of treatment and started one night with some severe
itching over my veins. My doctor is clueless and I imagine that this is one
of those rare sides no one knows anything about.

Lana

waterspider

| I remember someone else here posted about seeing changes in old scar
tissue.
| I've seen some dramatic changes and it's been confirmed by the nurse who
| draws my blood, my doctor and my husband. <gently snip>

Hi Lana,

I haven't a clue about your latest "colorful" experience, but am interested
in responses because I've noticed that my veins seem to have become larger,
raised, and much more visible. Might be related.

Take care,

Waterspider

szozu

Dear Spidey,

Well, that certainly raises a big "hmmmmm."

The other big 'hmmmmm" is that here I am with all these weird secondary
effects, but I'm sure there is no way my doctor is reporting them. How many
other people have all kinds of weird stuff going on? I suspect they only
report these things if you happen to be in a study, so the documentation
just doesn't exist.

For example, there was a very nice guy on the other ng, back when it was
still a viable ng, who ended up with polymyositis after tx. He said that
this was a very rare reaction to IFN and that there weren't many cases. Now
many years later, I've tried doing a web search and I can't find reference
to this anywhere. Shouldn't this come up on a search by now? He's still
disabled, so it's not like it was something that went away later. And
surpriseingly he WAS in a study and one of the reasons they didn't pull him
off his 18 month course of tx is because they apparently wanted to see what
would happen!

Lana