A Physician's Journey with the Hepatitis C Virus

The author spent his formative years under a dictatorial regime and survived an almost fatal case of hepatitis as a teenager, when the relevant viruses were not known yet. For several years he did biomedical research in his native Hungary (MD), then Italy, and the USA (PhD in biochemistry). After turning to clinical medicine, getting married and becoming a naturalized citizen, he was diagnosed with chronic hepatitis of unknown origin. By the time he completed his psychiatric training, became a faculty of the University of Michigan and father of newborn son, he developed cirrhosis. Nevertheless, he established the first academic Infant Psychiatry Program and did research on affect development, expression, and regulation. Later, he became medical director and full-time psychiatrist in Lynchburg, Virginia. Almost forty years after the acute hepatitis, liver transplant coincided with the recognition that the hepatitis C virus was the pathogen all along. It infected his new liver too. After retirement, he became a bioethicist (MA) and continued academic work as a part-time child-adolescent psychiatrist as well. He developed hepatitis C cirrhosis twenty years after transplantation, but new medications eliminated the virus before his liver would have decompensate. All these life events brought about spiritual reflections and transformations.