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When Darwin grandmother Maria was diagnosed with Australia’s most prevalent blood-borne virus — hepatitis C — in her early 50s, she “almost fell off the doctor’s chair”.
“You don’t always appear to be sick and that’s the scary thing about it,” Maria told 105.7 ABC Darwin.
“I was super fit, going to the gym and bootcamping. When I was told that I had hepatitis C, I was stunned.”
The shock quickly turned to devastation and depression, starting with a potentially life-threatening diagnosis by a doctor after she was sent for a liver scan in Melbourne.
“I just sat on the sidewalk outside a cafe and cried all morning,” she said.
Maria then decided to undergo a six-month round of injections — the only affordable treatment available at the time — to eradicate the disease, and that is when things became truly unbearable.