Soon, I grew anemic and pale, and started losing hair, then losing weight. My closest friends began telling people it was chemo; even on a unit full of women who’d carved whole lives around doing drugs, hepatitis still held too much stigma, and they wanted to protect me. But they could only do so much: If I simply wanted to know whether this was normal, there was no remedy for that. When you’re in prison, you can’t go get a second opinion, scour the internet for more information, or call up some friend of a friend who’s a nurse and can offer a quick hack or dash of reassurance. Figuring out
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