About Hep C Straightup

Hep C Straightup is a website dedicated to providing hepatitis C education that is understandable, credible, and the truth (aka, the straight up) to bikers and blue collar people. Everyone is welcome.

Hep C Straightup was created by bikers, for bikers

... & blue collar people.

There are just too many old school bikers either dying of, dead from, or disabled by hepatitis C because we tend to fall into high risk groups for hep C exposure, and either:

haven't even heard of hep C,
don't know they have it, or
don't really know what to do about
it.

We figure this is because the info that's out there is pretty inaccessible to us - even though there are a lot of really excellent hep C groups in existence we tend to trust our own.

Blue Collar is spoken here.

Info, opinions & speculation you'll find here come from a variety of sources that are cited, and include expert opinion & experience. We define experts in hepatitis C as:

people who live with hepatitis C, and
healthcare professionals who specialize in hepatitis C;

Hep C Straightup respects & appreciates the many physicians, scientists & pharmaceutical companies that tirelessly work to end this disease. We recognize that a double-edged sword exists here:

FACT: the pharma’s bottom line is their bottom line, even when that doesn’t work in everyone’s best interest.

FACT: drugs discovered and created by the pharmaceutical companies have been responsible for curing hepatitis C in some people.

Nonetheless, the information offered on this website is unadulterated by any corporate agenda: pharmaceutical or otherwise.

It may not be pretty, but it’s the straight up.

This site is solely funded out of the moth-eaten pocket of yours truly, the editor.

Now ...

About that Editor ...

Kathy Regalado lives with hep C, and loves to talk with people about it. Diagnosed in ’95, she & a lot of other people with hep C learned alongside the medical establishment about this disease.

While there’s a lot of information out there on the topic, most of it’s written at college level, and so is inaccessible to a lot of people – usually those of us who need it the most. So, she spends a lot of time interpreting that information in plain english.

Ms. Regalado is the founding editor of Hepcstraightup.com, a website about hepatitis C, geared towards bikers & blue collar people. Hep C Straightup exists to give people the “straight up” about this disease. “Blue Collar is spoken here.”

For a few years, she was a sub-contractor for a competitive intelligence firm, whose clients are pharmaceutical companies. Her main project was hepatitis C. This work, and her blue collar roots, fueled her passion to promote accessible hep C education to this day.
With a degree from the school of hard knocks, Kathy also managed to graduate from the University of Minnesota, summa cum laude, in spite of herself.