Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I have an appointment for a monovalent covid vaccine booster, and a flu vaccine, for this coming Saturday, Sept. 16.

When I looked yesterday, the earliest they had available at any location was the 18th, but cattitude looked this morning and found this. I have an appointment with the eye doctor Monday, and then am flying to Montreal Wednesday, so I was thinking I'd wait till I got back. But the time in airports, and on the airplane, are probably the highest-risk part of the trip, so any protection I can get is worth having.

I just got the results of the T Detect test for covid T cells, and it's positive, meaning they found T cells.

This comes with disclaimers about them not knowing what it means for immunity, of course.

ETA: I sent this information to my doctor soon after receiving it, and got a very enthusiastic "yay!!!" in response.

I just got an email from the company saying they have approved my request for financial assistance, covering everything except the prescription fee, and including a code to use during the ordering process. I wrote back, asking how to apply this retroactively. The FAQ on their website says that "If you have already purchased the test and your application for Adaptive Assist is approved to provide the test at a reduced cost, a refund will be processed to your credit card." So I probably don't need to do anything, but I wanted to follow up. (Given when I sent that, I don't expect a reply until Monday.) They have emailed to say the refund will be on my credit card in 3-5 business days.

I went to my doctor's office yesterday and had blood drawn for the semi-quantitative covid antibody test. The results came back this morning: no antibodies detected.

That's after three full doses of the Modern vaccine, the most recent one carefully timed relative to my MS medication and the time of day (and a Pfizer booster in November, poorly timed relative to the MS drug).

I will need to continue to be more careful than most people, even though it seems like that those vaccines left me with useful T cells.

(Also, our household's free rapid Covid tests arrived yesterday.)

I heard from my neurologist about that "semi-quantitative covid test":

He says the <1 result means that I have "no detectable antibody response to all vaccinations thus far," because of the MS medication.

I tried googling to see what a negative covid antibody test might mean, but the CDC and FDA just want to tell me what a positive covid antibody test would mean, not a negative one. So I wrote back, and asked whether I need to behave as though I'm not vaccinated. I'm hoping my T cells are primed and ready to deal with this virus, but that's a hope, not a fact.

The doctor did say that if I want to get a fourth vaccine dose, he'd recommend getting it 3-4 weeks before my next Ocrevus infusion, which would put it in the second half of March. So I'm also going to ask Carmen what she thinks about a possible fourth dose the next time I talk to her, in January.

The doctor also apologized for the delay, which is reassuring, and offered to give me a letter of "medical necessity" so I won't be billed for tests. (Another look at the message from the health insurance suggests that what I'm actually being billed for is the JC virus test, which I don't think was medically necessary, but the positive test result from ten years ago isn't in their system, so they might buy that.)

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ETA: I have some more information (from someone who is not my doctor). They confirmed that I probably have some useful protection from T cells, and also that given the timing of my booster dose of the vaccine last month, I should talk to my doctor about a fourth dose, carefully spaced at least 12 weeks after the most recent Ocrevus infusion, and at least four weeks before the following Ocrevus dose. That would mean sometime after January 13 and, conveniently, my next appointment with my doctor is for January 11th.