LAS VEGAS (AP) - For months after Patty Aspinwall was diagnosed with hepatitis C, she dreamed Dr. Dipak Desai was chasing her.

"Sometimes I still wake up gasping for breath," the 56-year-old grandmother said as she described her life in the two years since southern Nevadans learned that clinics owned by Desai were at the center of a hepatitis C outbreak.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think about what's happened, how it's affected my husband and me," Aspinwall said, flanked by her lawyer, Billie-Marie Morrison. "My entire life has changed - work, family, health, everything."

It was Desai who scheduled Aspinwall for a Sept. 21, 2007, colonoscopy at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada.

In February 2008, the Southern Nevada Health District revealed that authorities investigating a cluster of hepatitis C cases had observed nurses at the clinic reusing syringes in a manner that contaminated vials and, they believe, infected patients with the virus that attacks the liver.

Clinic staffers told investigators the practice was done at the direction of Desai and other administrators to save money.

Seven cases, including Aspinwall's, were genetically linked to procedures conducted at the clinic on Sept. 21, 2007. Two other acute cases have been linked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention either to Desai's Shadow Lane clinic or the Desert Shadow Endoscopy Center. Health officials say an additional 106 cases are "possibly linked" to Desai clinics.

As a Clark County grand jury opened a criminal inquiry this month into the hepatitis C outbreak, the Las Vegas Review-Journal spoke with four people who say they contracted the sometimes deadly infectious disease at Desai's clinics. All four have lawsuits pending against Desai, other clinic personnel, and medical and business enterprises that worked with the clinics.

What Aspinwall, Kenneth Nogle, Megan Gasper and Alynne Griffiths say about their lives today is largely the stuff of nightmares.

Teresa Wigley is proud her 25-year-old son, Kenneth Nogle, became a Las Vegas police officer. But she is angry about his struggle with a yearlong treatment regimen that included interferon, a potent substance sometimes capable of beating back hepatitis C.

"The people at that clinic took my son away from me," she said. "He used to be so high energy, go, go, go. He was 175 pounds of muscle, lifting weights and running every day, and then he went down to 140 something on the treatment. He could barely get out of bed. It just tore me up."

Unlike Aspinwall, Nogle's hepatitis isn't genetically linked to Desai's clinics.

Morrison, who also is Nogle's attorney, says his case is solid because his only risk factor was treatment at a Desai clinic.

Nogle injected himself in the stomach with medication from October 2008 until October 2009. He said he had to will himself through side effects, including chills, fever, headaches, fatigue, weight loss and depression.

Nogle went to Desai's clinic in November 2006 for a colonoscopy. Desai performed the procedure.

In early 2007, Nogle, donated blood but received a letter later saying he could no longer donate because tests showed he had antibodies for hepatitis C.

Nogle said a retest at the Endoscopy Center was negative.

"I lived for more than a year thinking I didn't have it," he said.

Then came the Feb. 27, 2008, news conference when public health officials urged people who had procedures at the Shadow Lane clinic
to get tested for hepatitis and HIV.

Nogle soon found hepatitis was eating away at his liver.

"It was so hard telling my girlfriend," he said. "She got tested right away for it, and she doesn't have it. ... We want to have kids but are afraid the disease could be transmitted to the child."

Megan Gasper, 34, and her husband, Thomas, a 35-year-old Henderson police sergeant, say their two sons, ages 6 and 8, have helped bring joy into their lives at a very difficult time. Not long ago, Megan Gasper found out that her yearlong treatment for hepatitis had failed.

"It is still fun to watch them grow up," she said, tears welling in her eyes as she sat with her attorney Robert Cottle. "But I don't know how good a mother I am sometimes. My temper can be short because of the medication. You're moody. It's hard to concentrate. It's hard to get out of bed."

Thomas Gasper said he doubts his anger about what happened to his wife will ever go away.

"I'm a police officer," he said. "I want to see justice done."

The illness has strained their relationship, but the Gaspers are determined to make it work. Megan Gasper, whose case also is not genetically linked, said the couple's Mormon faith has helped.

In early 2006, Megan Gasper's primary care doctor sent her to the Shadow Lane clinic for a colonoscopy. She later had a colonoscopy at another Desai clinic. Less than a year later, she received a letter from the health district recommending she get a blood test.

When she found out she had hepatitis C, she said, she became kind of hysterical.

"I'm an ultra long-distance runner," she said. "I could run 50 miles."

She compares her treatment to chemotherapy, and said that at best she gets four hours of sleep a night.

Now on a daily injection of interferon as well as anti-viral pills for another 18 months, Megan Gasper isn't sure what the future holds.

"I'm scared," she said.

Alynne Griffiths, 72, is afraid hepatitis is snaking through her.

"I always try to be positive, but I'm afraid about what's happening inside me," she said. "I'm exhausted a lot now."

Griffiths, the former owner of an art gallery, received two procedures at a Desai clinic - a colonoscopy in September 2005 and an endoscopy in March 2006.

When she received a letter from the health district to get tested, she was sure she didn't have the virus.

"I knew I had never done anything wrong," she said of the disease often associated with intravenous drug use, tainted blood transfusions, working with blood products and unprotected sex with multiple partners.

Her attorney, Gerald Gillock, said Griffiths' diagnosis has unsettled her.

Griffiths said her insurance carrier kept trying to send her to doctors associated with Desai for her hepatitis treatment.

Her current doctor, she said, advised her not to undergo the taxing treatment for hepatitis C.

There was a 40 percent chance of success, which didn't sound too good, she said.

She hopes her body can fight off the disease.

Aspinwall is aware hepatitis C means a lifelong risk of anemia, cirrhosis, liver failure and liver cancer.

"That's why I'm taking antidepressants and why I still see a therapist sometimes." But she said her doctor tells her she's pretty healthy now.

About a month after her colonoscopy, Aspinwall said she felt nauseated. In the weeks that followed, her husband noticed she was
turning yellow.

Blood tests at a hospital around Thanksgiving 2007 determined that she had hepatitis C.

"I started questioning everything about my life," she said. "I never used drugs, never did anything that were risk factors. I didn't want to talk with family and friends. I felt dirty."

Aspinwall couldn't concentrate at work, and she believes that led to her being laid off from a telecommunications company last year.

When the FBI interviewed her about her experience, Aspinwall said she held up well.

But as she was leaving, a woman told her she was courageous to talk about what happened.

"When I got to the car, I just broke down and couldn't stop crying," Aspinwall said.

Lately, Aspinwall said, she's finding happiness in sewing.

"I go before the (Clark County) grand jury today," she said March 11, the first day the panel started collecting information.

"Let's hope some kind of justice is done."