Well, what do you know. It turns out I had hepatitis after all.

My recent blood donation tested positive for antibodies to Hepatitis B. That means I was exposed to Hep B sometime in the past, and either fought it off or got sick from it and then recovered. I don't have active or chronic hepatitis. I can try giving blood again, just in case it's a false positive, but if it shows up again I'm banned. I'm not sure why -- would the antibodies hurt someone else? I suspect they just label me as a permanently sketchy character in the eyes of the Red Cross. Fair enough.

This whole blood donation thing was some kind of temporary insanity anyway. I need to take my friend's wise advice: "Let it go, dog, it's over." Ruff ruff.

It just makes me a little sad. I've worked so hard and made such sweeping changes, it seems only fair that I should be able to (allowed to?) somehow purify myself completely. But I never can. I can't go into my blood and filter out signs of disease. More importantly, I can't get into other people's heads and scrub out their bad memories of me. I can't even do that in my own head. I'll never really be "clean." Nobody is -- yeah, I know. But it seems like just another thing I've lost.

Whine, whine, whine. It also occurred to me that if I have the mental energy to be obsessing over side issues like this I must be doing fine.

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