Vulnerability & Hepatitis C

As a person living with hepatitis C, are you more vulnerable? Like so many words, "vulnerability" has the potential to have many meanings for different people. In the context of hepatitis C, we could address our vulnerability to health conditions like some of us have experienced, including cirrhosis, and all the extra-hepatic ones like diabetes, skin issues, and neurological disorders such as neuropathy. Our being vulnerable to these other conditions poses challenges to how we receive care and how we deal with them in our day to day lives.

How stigma makes us feel vulnerable

Stigma can make us vulnerable, even for the most secure person. Nobody likes to be judged or defined by others in a negative light. We can be discriminated against in our social circles, medical offices, workplaces, places of worship, and in our close relationships with people who know little about hep C. In general, stigma is born out of ignorance about the illness - They just don’t understand much. Judgements based on falsely-held beliefs are never a good foundation for fairness or kindness for that matter.

There are a number of ways we can be made to feel vulnerable

We could be singled out or discriminated for our age, gender, sexual identity, illness, financial status, food and shelter security, and many other facets of identity. In a society where we have a tendency to stratify/separate out groups of people, there is a seemingly endless supply of terms and descriptors one can use. I am not suggesting that this is a bad thing necessarily, but it is a relatively modern approach to a lot of things. I have witnessed the changes over decades. Things change relatively slowly in reality, as much as we want things to move quickly.

What's next

Some of the changes we have seen in society have not been positive at all; Unfortunately, we have not progressed in ways that lessen vulnerability for all groups of people. Yes, we can cure hepatitis C, and we have made some strides in other areas where people are affected by hep C, but there remains more work to be done. When it comes to creating a larger and more inclusive community which is not itself split into factions, there is a need for more work. This may make us all less vulnerable to stigma.

How vulnerable any one of us feels is a personal thing, and I do not suppose to label you or tell you how to feel. Perhaps you have no sense at all of being vulnerable. I do think it is a normal thing for all of us to have that feeling at some point in our life, as I have. When I was struggling in life to overcome barriers, I felt weakened and more vulnerable and dependent. Was it always horrible? No, it was not. I have decided that it was part of an education of sorts and I learned some valuable lessons. No, it was not always easy, but here I am, still learning lessons. Still being vulnerable.