And it had to be in SA. Yesterday, I was doing an ascitic tap on a patient and one of the doctors was helping me. He withdrew the stilette from the cannula as I prepared to connect the tubing. Then, I’m not sure how, he slightly pricked me on the side of my right index finger.
Shit
You should remember that this is a country with at ~30% HIV infection rate. The next couple of hours were a bit crazy, with both myself and the patient requiring a rapid HIV test. The patient had been tested previously and was negative, but you can’t be too careful. I was ‘counselled’ on the process, given a STAT dose of anti-retroviral therapy and then the waiting began. I knew my test would come back negative – HIV takes 3 months to show antibodies in the bloodstream, and even though they did a PCR and ELISA on my sample, there was no way it could come back positive following such a small inoculating dose.
The next few hours passed very very slowly. Then, I got the news. The patient was negative.
Relief.
A couple of hours later, my result came out, which was also negative. No need for a week of ARVs, nausea and vomiting, and luckily my first needlestick will prove non-fatal. That said, I’m never letting anyone else withdraw a stillette for me again – I don’t care if the cannula leaks all over the patient’s bed.
Obvioulsy I’ll need to do a repeat test in 3 months to make absolutely sure, but I seem to have dodged this particular bullet.
How do buddy?
Thats a little too close for comfort!!
You better not come back here carrying AIDS, it better not be the bad AIDS anyway (see Brass Eye for what the “good” and “bad” AIDS are).
Anyway everything seems to be going fairly well.
I’ll keep up with this and talk to you later!
remember, no bad AIDS!!!!!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brass_Eye
P.s you would qualify for the “good AIDS”