Carla’s story: I beat hep C and now I’m helping others

I’m a peer worker at a Needle and Syringe Program and in the hep C testing and treatment space.  

It’s very, very hard to find help. I think the straight community think you can just go and get help for drug and alcohol problems. “Go and get some counselling!” It’s not that easy. Getting to those appointments is not easy. 

So it’s unrealistic, and stigma and discrimination comes from that inaccurate understanding of what is actually out there. If someone has an experience of someone with a drug or alcohol problem who behaved badly, then every single drug user is going to be seen like that. 

As a peer worker at Redfern NSP. I have lived experience of some issues that a lot of our consumers have. I do education and talk from first-hand experience. I can give education on vein care, or the dangers of some ways of using, or the best place to go or the best equipment to use.  

I find that because I do have first-hand knowledge, it’s taken seriously.   

For example, a woman came in the other day and she was crying because she was stressed about the fact that she was misusing her methadone and we talked for a little about what some of her options were and at the end of that she came to a decision about what she was going to do and walked out smiling. I understood her problem extremely well from my own experience, so I could give her some realistic options — not just what you legally or morally should do. 

I have first-hand knowledge of beating hep C. I lived with hep C for most of my adult life: from when I was 19 till I was 46, when the new treatments came out. That changed my life in terms of my thinking and mental health, but also my attitude about myself.

I started to feel, “I do have a bit of damage on my liver, so I’ve got to start taking care of myself. And I’ve got a 14-year-old daughter. It’s the middle of my life now and I’d better pull it up a bit.”  

It was really timely but also a really valuable experience taking care of myself, because I don’t think I’d ever really done that. It was a nice feeling and I feel proud of myself for beating hep C, actually. 

I didn’t clear the first time and I wasn’t going to go back. I felt somehow responsible for the fact that I didn’t clear the first time. I was so embarrassed. I think back now and think, “Why was I so embarrassed? I don’t understand.” But I thought I’d let the nurses down. 

When health professionals talk to me like I’m a naughty child, it makes me feel that I’ve let them down, because it was somehow my fault. It backfires on me. It makes my anxiety worse and then I can’t engage with them anymore. 

Knowing how this stigma stopped me getting treatment in the past helps me help others overcome it.