Any blood to blood contact, your blood mixed with someone else's blood

I've read 57% is thought to be through sharing needles. That leaves 43% "other" with all the other stuff. I'm the 43% but my body doesn't manage it any differently at this point. Mine was from risky, intimate behavior as I've stated elsewhere here months ago. It seemed fun at the time, not so much now.

I know it's blood to blood contact but I wonder what that means in real life. How dangerous am I to my kids? Sometimes I scratch mosquito bites and notice blood, wash hands, but still... Also, if a lot of you got it from manicures, I might adopt that as a cover story.

Ernie, if your stat is true, then almost half the people with it didn't share needles. So if people knew that, it might take some of the stigma off.

Well I did a lot of reading about HCV. I saw that number often, sometimes 60%. There are a lot of ways. Transfusions and transplants prior to HCV screening years ago, shared personal instruments like razors, toothbrushes and sharp personal instruments, being a hemodialysis patient in an in-center unit with cross contamination, sex where there is blood exchange even microscopic, tattoos, manis, pedis, 10% or so that never know how they got it, accidental needle sticks for health care workers, small percentage of mothers to children and I'm sure I'm missing something.

I have reason to suspect it was childhood dentist.
Rationally, it probably occurred in my professional career.
Or was it the military?
Who the heck knows; very few really know.

I'm one of those Ernie cited as getting it thru a blood transfusion, 1969, before the blood supply was tested for hep

If your concern is "how dangerous is it to my kids", I'd say that if you're not diligent you can be very dangerous, and if you take normal care, you're not dangerous at all

No shared toothbrushes or razors. No cuteness like "mommy has a little cut, wanna kiss the boo boo". No casualness about blood. Wash it, bandage it, use paper towels and throw them out. Don't use a cloth towel to wash a small bleed, or clean up a drop of blood, and then return the towel to the rack

On the other hand, a teething infant can bite your finger and draw blood and that would be dangerous for the kid. I got a really nasty cut years ago and absolutely refused to let my adult kids anywhere near it to help treat me.

By the way, the kids are married adults and I've had hcv their entire life, and they are not infected. Nor is my wife

There is nothing you should take for granted. Blood can pass between people in lots of ways, including picking on a scab and not cleaning up properly

However, for the average person you encounter at work or the supermarket, there is no risk. This is not an airborne disease that spreads whenever you cough

I'm curious about your question. Is your concern that people would think you used drugs, or is it that they'd worry that you're contagious and dangerous to them?

I think i can ALMOST pin point when i got it, 30+ years ago. I either got it from shootin drugs or there was a nite I clearly remember sittin in a dive biker bar and EVERYONE of us were gettin tatts.
my friend, Spike, (rip) went from one person to the next at my table and the rest is history...........

Well the easiest way is to use someones shaving razor after the infected person.

Thanks for the replies. And in answer to the question (which was thought provoking, thanks for asking it) as to what I'm afraid of, it was that people would assume iv drug use. But now i'm wondering if they would be afraid as well. I know enough to know there's no reason, but they may not. Drag.

Ernie, I LOVE your new avie.

Everyone, tomorrow my sweet Pepper dog will cross the Rainbow Bridge. I won't feel like posting for a while. He was the love of my life. I really wasn't going to post at all even tonight but saw Ernie's avie and just had to.

Also - I know how I got this curse - slammin' heroin in the late 60's. No shame. If ppl ask me how I got it I tell them. I don't care what they think about it or me.

Have FUN here. I'll be back when I can.

But if we... the very people who have this disease, dont tell..... how do we educate people on this? I dont give a flyin f@#* who knows that i have it! I made poor choices in my past and I dont live in my past anymore. So there is a stigma attached to it........... EVERYONE who has it was not a junkie........... so why cant we stand up for the stigma, regardless if we were junkies or not? Educate people on this disease! Would you be embarrassed to educate people on having cancer? This is just how I feel about it.........

I think there are reasons for not telling, particularly if it's a work situation. If telling you have hcv, or cancer, or migraines, or lots of issues (including a family situation, pending divorce etc) is going to cause potential problems at work, then why put yourself in that position.

I have a friend who is pretty upfront about having cancer, fortunately in remission. everyone knows. And whenever she does something people don't agree with they say "ah, poor gal, she has cancer", or "cancer makes people act that way". nobody ever says "that was a dumb thing to do". Every action is linked back to cancer, which is certainly not reality

I'm still in the don't tell category

I think blood plasma years ago, but not really sure, I go to a dentist every 6 months, had manicures and pedicures, and when I was a kid we did the blood brother thing. so don't know for sure. Never did drugs so I know it is not from that.

When i was 13 in 1969 doctors mistook trama for brain cancer and took a huge chunk of my brain out and had plazma in recoverey.It started a domino affect with a stroke and seizures and other complications the rest of my life.Trying hard to get on with my life and beat this hep thats plauged all of us here.

I got it from a blood transfusion back on my own personal day of infamy... December 7th,1986.

Six years later I was diagnosed with it and even then they called it "non A, non B hepatitis until the first actual PCR tests became available a for wide scale use... I was then put on what was then still an experimental treatment whereby Interferon Alpha 2b was injected on a daily basis alone in huge doses, without the addition of Riba pills

After six weeks of treatment, I started to respond to the treatment in both positive as well as negative ways... In other words, the treatment was starting to work as the amount of the virus was cut to one third of what I originally was diagnosed with yet, it also started to affect me both physically and mentally...

By week 21, I was a train wreck waiting to happen, so they took me off the treatment which started my downward spiral to the degree where I came really close to slipping my sobriety and just giving up all together...

But I didn't because I had great people as my support group that were there for me practically 24/7 and back then, there were no forums available as we have nowadays to reach out or to seek guidance when one was having a hard time.

There's a whole lot more to my story but, it'll just have to wait because I wanted to add to some of the methods of transmission the Hepatitis virus infects people...

In the seventies and eighties there was an ever increasing use of snorting cocaine and one of the methods of ingesting the drug was to actually snort the cocaine, or Heroin powder via the use of rolled up currency such as a larger than average denomination of dollar bills in to the nostrils...

When more than one person did this, there was an increased risk that the virus could be transferred through sharing the use of the bills, or straws, or anything else that one could roll up for the purpose of snorting the cocaine/heroin up their noses..

For instance, one person already yet probably unknowingly, already is infected and is sharing the bill, straw, or any type of mechanism that resemble a tube whereby one end is put in one of the nostrils and the other end starts to vacuum the cocaine/heroin into their olfactory cavities... During this process ,there could indeed be a transfer of the virus to the next person that uses it also...

So sharing needles are not the only way the virus is transmitted with the use of drugs.

Respectfully,
Henry