Naomi Judd’s battle with hepatitis C
Long before Naomi Judd was a music queen with cowboy boots, she was a nurse in Nashville, Tenn. According to an article Naomi penned for Everyday Health, she worked in the intensive care unit, ICU, for years. During that crazy time, Naomi saw patients under dizzying circumstances and was accidentally stuck with a needle. It’s unclear when exactly that incident took place, but her health began to decline in late ’80s.
Namoi says in 1989 she began to lose steam and suffered from headaches and nausea. She chalked it up to her grueling tour schedule but later decided to see a doctor, who in 1991 diagnosed her with hepatitis C. She was given just three years to live.
After years on medication, Naomi emerged better than ever, reports the Chicago Tribune. “I’m cured,” she told the newspaper in 1998. “I’ve not only overcome and survived, but I’ve thrived… When you are told by medical authorities you have three years on this planet, that you’re going to be taking a six-foot dirt nap and that this is an absolutely incurable terminal illness, the sense of entrapment is so suffocating, so claustrophobic.”
She owes her life to a drug called alpha interferon, and being one of the lucky 20% of patients “whose body is free of the hepatitis C virus after [only using this] treatment.”