For nearly 20 years, Pamela Anderson lived with hepatitis C. She was told the virus would kill her.
“It was a death sentence. That’s what my doctor told me — that I probably had around 10 years to live,” the “Baywatch” actress said at a fundraiser for AIDS research on Sunday.
“I’m sure that colored and corrupted my decisions. It was not fear of death but fear of what might happen to my young children. It turned my life inside out.”
She was diagnosed with hepatitis C in the late 1990s, when there was no cure.
In 1991, meds helped clear the disease in fewer than 10% of people. By 2011, they were 50 to 75% effective.
“I was lucky,” said Anderson. “I was offered it in its early stages, and it took everything I had in my bank to pay for it. It wasn’t covered by insurance yet, and I felt tremendous guilt that others weren’t granted the same access.”
In 2015, the actress announced she was hepatitis C free.
The infection that Anderson was able to overcome is one of the most common types of liver infections in the US. While medication can cure hepatitis C in more than 95% of people, it often goes undetected. This can lead to delayed treatment and lasting consequences.
Here’s what to know.
How people get hepatitis C
Hepatitis is a general term for inflammation of the liver, and can cause lasting liver damage over time. There are five common viral types: A, B, C, D and E.
Hepatitis C is transmitted through infected blood. Injection devices or sharp objects shared or improperly cleaned between uses can transmit hepatitis C — think needles, syringes, razors or nail clippers.
Anderson said she’d contracted the disease by sharing a tattoo needle with her ex-husband, Tommy Lee.
As many as 43% of hepatitis C cases were associated with injection drugs, according to the CDC.
Parents can also pass the virus to their baby, and less commonly, the virus can spread through sex.
Hepatitis is diagnosed in a two step process. First, people are screened with a blood test that looks for antibodies, and diagnoses are confirmed with a second blood test that looks for genetic material from the virus.
What are the symptoms of hepatitis C?
Hepatitis C is one of the most common types of viral hepatitis in the US — 2.4 to 4 million Americans had hepatitis C from 2017 to 2020, according to the CDC.
But many people with the disease don’t know they have it. Symptoms can take decades to appear, so screening is recommended for people 18 and up.
Hepatitis infections start in the “acute phase,” which rarely causes symptoms. If it does, it might look like jaundice, fatigue, nausea, fever and muscle aches.
Over time, this can become chronic hepatitis C. Symptoms appear only after the virus damages the liver enough to cause them.
This can make people fatigued, bleed or bruise easily, lose their appetite, produce dark urine or build up fluid in the stomach or swelling in the legs.
It can cause decline in brain function as the liver fails to remove toxins like ammonia from the blood. This causes confusion, drowsiness and slurred speech.
Over time, this damage to the liver can cause liver failure, cancer and death. Chronic hepatitis C is the leading cause of liver cancer and liver transplants in the US.
How hepatitis C is treated
Since 2014, antiviral pills have been available and cure more than 95% of people in eight to 12 weeks.
The faster a patient is diagnosed and receives treatment, the better the outlook — which is why screening is so important for a disease that often doesn’t show symptoms.
If treatment is delayed, the virus could cause lasting liver damage, cancer and death, the CDC says.
Though there are vaccines to prevent hepatitis A and B, there is no vaccine for hepatitis C.
While Anderson was cured, she said she felt lasting “shame and guilt” around her disease that working in the arts helped her overcome.
“I’m not a victim, I’m a victor. I am strong and capable, more now than I could ever dream of,” she said. “I’m not the damsel in distress, no matter how easy that role is to play.”
