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.
