Thursday, January 19, 2017

ok. umm...

i was vaccinated.

the doctor is...he's got a lot of work to do....this is why i asked for the print-out...

the blood test results indicate i'm positive for anti-hbs. that means i'm immune. given that i also have immunity to hep A, i must have gotten twinrix at some point.

the test that the lab requested is to determine if i may have defeated it naturally and become a "chronic carrier". note that a "chronic carrier" is not the same thing as a "chronic infection". whether i misunderstood or he misspoke is less important than getting it right...but i think he read the information too briskly and misspoke, leading me to a false understanding...

when i said today that i should wait until march because there's a temporal component and i wouldn't learn anything from an immediate test, he nodded and said something about a graph and appeared to be struggling to remember something he hadn't thought about since college. google is so remarkably useful. he was no doubt thinking about this:



if i had picked up hep b in the blackout, i wouldn't have tested positive for anti-hbs a mere 11 weeks after infection, which is what happened. i must have already had immunity. what he told me had led me to believe that they had picked up lgM anti-HBc which, at 11 weeks, would indicate exposure. that is not the case. this was a miscommunication.

if i wasn't in shock, i would have asked for it in writing in the first place.

doctors are not magicians. it's always a good idea to ask questions, get things in writing and do independent research. i'm not upset because i consider this to be my responsibility, and not his.

but this is cleared up. whatever sickness i had this month, it wasn't hep b. i'm already immune to hep b. and i think it's clear that i'm immune to hep b because i was in fact vaccinated.

i still don't know what happened that night, though.