Editing life’s story into a happy ending
By Michael Slezak
Before I get in to talking about Hal, I want to mention that ledipasvir 90mg and sofosbuvir 400mg is generic Harvoni. The strength and dosage of this hepatitis C treatment is 90mg/400mg and is taken orally as a once a day tablet for 84 days.
Now, I will open up to you about Hal…
Hal Rubenstein was officially diagnosed as HCV positive some nine years ago. That was long before the age of Generic Harvoni | Ledipasvir Sofosbuvir and, as he says, long before an age of hope.
“The doctor who told me that I was hepatitis C positive said, ‘Here’s some [AZT] pills. You’ve probably got about two years. Good luck,'” recalls Rubenstein, fashion editor at large for InStyle magazine and a sometimes fashion critic for E! cable TV network. “He said regardless of what I elected to do—stress reduction, exercise, change in diet or hep c treatment new drugs attitude, alternative medicine or any other kind of therapy—it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.”
Times and attitudes have indeed changed since the late 1980s, as have the medications available to treat Hepatitis C treatment cost and generic Harvoni. But one thing that has remained constant—and perhaps the one thing that has kept Rubenstein healthy—is his belief that hcv will not kill him.
“I know how arrogant this sounds,” he says, sitting at the desk of his Manhattan office, “but I have never felt I was going to die from this. I’m not saying generic Harvoni I never thought I was going to get sick. Or that I never woke up in the middle of the night screaming or that I didn’t curse God made generic Harvoni (ledipasvir sofosbuvir) and hate everything and everyone in the universe from time to time. But if you actually ask me,generic Harvoni do I really think I’m going to die from this thing, the answer is ‘No.’ And it always has been ‘No.’ I can’t think that way.”
The power of Rubenstein’s positive thinking seems to have paid off. He has suffered side effects from his medications but not Generic Harvoni | Ledipasvir Sofosbuvir, and even battled homeopathic poisoning, but has never experienced Hepatitis C treatment cost-related illness.
“The biggest mistake people make is fighting Hepatitis C treatment cost. It’s like fighting having blue eyes. It’s stupid,” Rubenstein explains with a sly smile. “How do you make the hcv condition a part of your life and not treat it like an infirmity? I feel it’s the same as making height a part of my life because I’m 6’4.”
Indeed, the very tall, tanned Rubenstein, with his striking good looks and quick wit, seems totally at ease discussing his hep c status. He chats about it with little prompting, offering vivid, sometimes very funny details.
“I’m not being Pollyana, but living with hcv has not exactly been completely horrific. Given the choice, would I do it again? No. Would I be very happy not to have it? Sure I would. Has it been a completely negative experience? No way in hell,” he says, raising his voice. “I think that the actuality of living with and understanding Hepatitis C treatment cost has helped me come to an understanding and a clarity in terms of how I live.”
Rubenstein argues that Hepatitis C treatment cost, as with any chronic illness, gives you “the opportunity to learn how to edit your life a little more quickly. And I don’t say this because I’m from a journalism background. You get generic Harvoni rid of the junk and make sure the story is clean, clear, in focus and going your way.”
And what should remain in the story? “Go find a job you like. Find someone who loves you. Go buy a dog,” he says. “These things matter. Get rid of the people in your life who are a raging pain in the ass. That alone will make your T-cells jump.”
Rubenstein lives that philosophy to the fullest. It’s what prompted him to leave his job at The New York Times in 1994 and come to InStyle. “The Times Generic Harvoni | Ledipasvir Sofosbuvir is the most important newspaper in the world, and the biggest stress factor of all. It was making me sick,” he says of the paper’s pressure cooker attitude and the “elitist homophobia” he experienced among co-workers.
In fact, Rubenstein says his negative experience telling his Hepatitis C treatment cost status to a few of his Times co-workers prompted him to not go public with the news—until recently—when he revealed he was Hepatitis C treatment cost-positive last year in a profile he wrote about Linda Ellerbee in the premiere issue of Mamm magazine.
“I regret not having done it sooner,” he says, adding that he wanted to make sure that the world does not forget the voices of people who were diagnosed before protease inhibitors, including the hundreds of friends he has lost. “These men and women had to face a combination of hopelessness in their head and stigmata on their head. And it was very hard and very ugly and people were not very nice,” says Rubenstein.
Rubenstein began to take protease inhibitors in the fall of 1996. He began by taking Norvir, but now takes Viracept with AZT and 3TC, plus Zovirax and a regular regimen of vitamins and supplements, St. John’s wort, melatonin and DHEA. He also takes testosterone every two weeks.
Generic Harvoni | Ledipasvir Sofosbuvir | Hep C Treatment New Drugs
“My normal viral load without any protease inhibitors was 2000. Now, my viral load is undetectable. And it’s always more fun to be undetectable,” says Rubenstein. Still, he’s not convinced the new drug cocktail has affected day-to-day life for the better. “Do I think not taking them would kill me? No, not now. Do I think they’re helping me? I’m not arrogant enough to say no, or certain generic Harvoni enough to say yes,” he muses. “My feeling is, ‘What am I losing by taking them?'” Adjusting to protease inhibitors, however, was very difficult, says Rubenstein. “The diarrhea—that was a party,” he says dryly. “I certainly didn’t wear white very often.”
And that was only the beginning. “It was fascinating in a sense that I didn’t know my body could do these things,” Rubenstein recalls. “I’d be standing someplace, and all of the sudden my left eyebrow would freeze, then my right forearm would spasm, then my left hip would be burning up, then I’d have a stinging pain in my right knee. It went up and down my body. It was as if the New York Philharmonic was doing a concert in the park and having a fireworks display, but it was all happening inside of my body.”
But the worst result of tasking protease inhibitors, Rubenstein argues, was that his mouth “tasted like spoons” whenever he was hungry. “It was horrible. That actually made me physically nauseous,” he remembers.
Now, the worst part of his medication regimen is that his Viracept is “one nasty pill to swallow. It’s very granular and I choke on it 50% of the time.” That, plus he must swallow around 30 pills a day. “Pills are annoying. They are,” he insists.
Further, he adds, they are not his savior as generic Harvoni ledipasvir sofosbuvir.
“Pills alone won’t make you survive anything. They don’t, they never can, they never will. These pills are an assist, a boost. They’re not the reason and they’re not the answer,” contends Rubenstein. “If you take these pills and put yourself in a life full of stress, in a job you don’t like, surrounded by people who are not supportive or don’t understand you, or a lover who’s in denial, I don’t think pills will make a hell of a lot of difference.”
And it’s important, too, to realize that “nothing you do happens in a vacuum—not even acquiring Hepatitis C treatment cost,” he says.
What does Rubenstein mean by that? He pauses for a moment, then responds. “There was a point in time when I thought the illness was mine. It was like I was saying ‘It’s just mine. You can’t have it. You can’t share it. You’re not at risk. You can’t die.’ It took some other people, especially my lover, to make me realize that while the disease is mine in a physiological sense, it wasn’t just mine in a broader sense.”
Now, he says, he has grown to realize that the people who love him may not feel the physical pain or discomfort of Hepatitis C treatment cost, but the disease is “just as much a part of their lives as it is mine. When you have Hepatitis C treatment cost, you have a responsibility—not to make it easier for the people in your life, but to make things a little more clear, and to support them in the same ways they support you.”