Dear Lucy: If my partner has herpes but no outbreaks, and the condom breaks unknowingly, but we take a shower after we finish, will it still be contagious? —Worried
Dear Lucy: I’m old (over 45). Should I get revaccinated with the MMR vaccine? Will MIT Medical give it to me, or do I have to wait until I’m 50 for the shingles vaccine? —Aging Gen-Xer
Dear Lucy: I’m looking forward to summer, but I’m not looking forward to the deer flies swarming me on my morning walks! I’m wondering if they can transmit West Nile virus, eastern equine encephalitis, or any other disease? Those deer flies certainly bite, and I’ve killed a few that have obviously had a blood meal. —Once Bitten
Dear Lucy: I have been reading with interest the current news about measles outbreaks and note that many of us born between 1957 and 1989 may no longer be protected. Is MIT going to roll out an MMR booster for those of us who’ve only had one dose and are otherwise healthy enough to be vaccinated? —Spotty Immunity
Dear Lucy: Hey! I’m a freshman and everyone’s been getting sick around me. Google advises me to wash and sanitize my hands and wipe down surfaces to prevent myself from getting sick, but I’m a busy MIT student and don’t have time to clean every surface every minute and wash my hands every time I touch anything. When should I wash or sanitize my hands? What surfaces should I clean, and how often?
Also, here, have a meme! —Clean Bill Of Health
Dear Lucy: I’m a new graduate student at MIT, and I’m gay. While I do have a boyfriend, I also have sex with other men actively. I want to go through STI testing, and I am also thinking of taking PrEP medicines to prevent HIV infection.
Are the STI tests and PrEP covered by student insurance? And which doctor should I see for the testing and prescription?—So Many Questions
Dear Lucy: I was just in the bathroom at work reading the fine print on a can of germicide spray. It says that it’s for “hard porous surfaces” and that it is effective against HIV among other things. What gives? I thought the HIV virus couldn't live outside bodily fluids. Am I wrong? —Nancy Drew
Dear Lucy: I read an article about bird flu, in which a scientist noted that putting one’s hand in bird excrement would be one way of contracting the disease. He seemed to scoff at the idea of anyone actually doing that, but another recent article in the same paper reported that many local playing fields are covered in goose doo. And, just the other day, while eating a salad at one of the tables outside the Student Center, I caught myself picking up a piece of lettuce that had blown onto the grated table top and eating it. As I did, I noticed that the lettuce had picked up some residue of what may well have been bird droppings. (Yeah, not too smart, but it was done without thinking.)
Anyway, lots of people eat outside at the Institute, and lots of us play sports, or have kids who play sports, on outside fields also used by geese. So how concerned should we really be about this mode of transmission? —Doos And Don’ts
Dear Lucy: With the talk of a really bad tick season and new tick-borne diseases, I was intrigued by that video making the rounds on social media that shows a tick dislodging itself shortly after the application of a drop of peppermint oil. But then another friend posted that she’d heard that the peppermint-oil method was actually dangerous and made infection more likely. Is that true? How do you recommend removing a tick? —Peppermint Patty
Dear Lucy: Why do MIT Medical providers assume everything is viral and nothing is bacterial? Shouldn’t a doctor perform some analytic test to determine the cause of an illness? —Sinusitis Sufferer
