So where did it come from?

So, the question arises: Where did the Hep C in my liver originally come from? As I have been an IV drug user from 1972 – 1985, 1989 – 1990 and then again from 1998 – 2000 it has been commonly assumed that that is how I contracted the disease. Since learning more about it, I have found various other ways of how I could have got it. First of all I had did my first tattoo at the age of 13. We all used the same 3 needles, bound together by some string. There were 4 or 5 of us, can’t remember exactly. Then I had a blood transfusion just after my daughter’s birth in 1979. Strangely enough the hospital where this procedure was undertaken has been closed down since and all records lost. Who said German bureaucracy is one of the most efficient in this world? After that followed professional tattoos and piercings. Did I ever check that the equipment was sterile? Did I heck!!! Then of course my arrest in Turkey in 1982, the subsequent rapes and beatings in the police cells, the 11 ½ months in Turkish prison in Edirne, where razors were shared regularly as we were short of everything. After being released from there, I had to remain in Turkey as I was on bail. 9 months of sharing needles with a boyfriend and his brother followed. Then I escaped to Germany on a false passport and promptly landed in a female prison in Berlin(Frauenhaftanstalt Lehrter Straße). I was in quite a few physical fights in there, many with open wounds. My own little ‘tattoo studio’ on the beach in Syros, Greece, followed. Again the contact with blood was daily. And I had more tattoos in England after 1985. And although I was very careful not to share any syringes during my 2 relapsed here, I am not absolutely sure, that nobody has given me works, saying they were new, but were in fact used. So I think, the question “Where did I get infected” remains a mystery and I don’t think I will ever be sure. But it does make me aware, that not everybody who is a junky with Hep C has necessarily contracted it from IV drug use.