At the Printers!

Melissa Hung
April 4, 2005

Subscribers, expect issue 6 to land on your doorstep in a month (and sooner for those of you in the Bay Area.)

On a personal note, I've been stressing over someone in my family who just discovered she has hepatitis B. Here she is, an adult well into her 50s, and she's probably had this her whole life and didn't even know it. Lots of people carry hep B without symptoms -- their liver function test results are A-OK. But left untreated, hep B can turn into liver cancer. And you don't even get symptoms with liver cancer until you reach a late stage. Then, it's too late.

Hepatitis B is not a big concern to the general American population, however, Asians and Asian Americans are particularly at risk. My family member only got diagnosed because she went to get a second opinion about something else from an Asian American doctor. And he runs hep B tests on all his patients, even those who don't request it. Her liver function is fine and she seems healthy, so who knew how long she would have gone on without getting tested? He probably saved her life.

I encourage all of you to get tested -- even if you've been vaccinated. You could have gotten Hep B at birth from your mother and not even know it. Getting the Hep B antibody test to see if you have the vaccine is not enough. You need to get the antigen test to see if you've been infected.

For info, the Asian Liver Center is a good resource and has a handbook that you can download.

You can also read this story by our own Jennifer Huang that ran in the very first issue of Hyphen.


Contributor: 

Melissa Hung

Founding Editor

Melissa Hung is the founding editor of Hyphen. She was the editor in chief for the magazine's first five years and went on to serve in many other leadership roles on the staff and board for more than a decade. She is a writer and freelance journalist. Her essays and reported stories have appeared in NPR, Vogue, Pacific Standard, Longreads, and Catapult, among others. She grew up in Texas, the eldest child of immigrants. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Comments

Comments

blueskelton wrote on Mon, 04/04/2005 - 7:23pm
coolness i will buy it if i see it
bar wrote on Tue, 04/05/2005 - 8:22am
when will it be online?
melissa wrote on Tue, 04/05/2005 - 11:06am
good question. in addition to redesigning the print mag, we're also redesigning the website to match the look and feel of the print version. so look for some online previews of issue 6 stories in may.
claire wrote on Wed, 04/06/2005 - 12:56am
just for clarification:with the exception of occasional articles, the magazine's content doesn't appear on the web in its entirety. to read our newest issue you'll have to buy the print edition.on the web we have web exclusive articles and the blog.