Demon in My Blood. Elizabeth Rains

disease probably vanished a month or two after they contracted it. Many years later they may be blindsided by the diagnosis. They feel their luck has turned bad, which primes their mind for disaster.

      Dr. Radev said if my hep had disappeared during the acute stage, I would have developed antibodies to protect against the disease for the rest of my life. But there’s no guaranteed immunity. In a 2010 study of drug users who had cleared acute hepatitis C, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore discovered that reinfection is possible. Reinfected individuals are more likely to clear the infection during the acute stage of hepatitis C than to develop the chronic disease. More definitive studies showed similar results with chimpanzees. (Reinfection was easier to prove with chimps because they could be injected with the virus. That was unthinkable with humans—but it was cruel to the chimps.) Nonetheless, people who experience only acute hep C are in luck. If they stay away from contaminated blood, their hepatitis will be gone forever, and so will the viral threat of liver damage.