Saturday, March 31, 2007

Dirty Needle

I can't believe I stuck myself. When I felt the stick, I was shocked, and I thought, no way, there's no way what I just felt was that needle going into me. So, I finished up with the patient, threw away my gloves and left the room, and in the hallway I squeezed my finger to see if it would bleed, to see if I did in fact stick myself or if it was just some other stinging sensation that I felt. Well, I bled. Then I went and told the charge nurse, and he asked me, well are you sure you stuck the patient too? And I thought so, so I went back to the room and squeezed the patient's arm to see if it would bleed, and it did. I accidently stuck myself with a dirty needle today. I still don't understand how in the world it happened, especially since I was using our new insulin pens that are pretty much fool proof so that you won't stick yourself. I never got stuck with the old kind. I'm actually not worried... I mean it's highly unlikely that this man has anything, but it's kinda weird to think that he could have something and that now I could have something... but even if he had HIV there's a super low chance that I would be able to contract it from a dirty needle stick. Anyways, his blood got sent off to the lab today to be tested, so that we'll know whether or not I need to be tested. I'm sure it's fine. They won't test the blood till Monday.

4 comments:

kentbrantly said...

wow. i guess everybody has to have a first time, huh? at least your first time to get stuck was with a low risk patient. i hope everything turns out negative on monday. hang in there.

Meredith said...

I can't believe you got stuck! I'm sure it will all by fine, but wow... Today I gave an injection with out gloves... I didn't stick myself but I felt so guilty... like I had just broke the cardinal rule! I'm sorry you got poked. I'll be praying.

Emy said...

Did you ever get the results back???

Love you!1

Rebecca said...

No results yet. I'll post when I get them.