The Glade 4.0

I'm finishing up the last part of my OB rotation right now. Have only seen one vaginal birth but have assisted on multiple C-sections at this point. Finally a vaginal birth is due on a day I'm there and it's my turn in the student rotation. I stick around 2 hours after my shift to try to see it through and finally catch a baby. Things weren't going well and we had to go to surgery to get the baby out via C-section.

While closing, I reached over to put something down, not seeing the nurse was holding out a new suture for the doctor. I didn't feel anything but the nurse said she thought she stuck me. I thought I was okay, so we finished it out. My attending thanked me for staying and left to go home. After washing up, I see a tiny blood spot on my my finger that kept coming back. Seemed I got poked through my glove. The suture was sterile, but there was the patient's blood all over my gloves. Then I start recalling the patient told me she smoked all throughout her pregnancy and used to smoke weed. Then I'm worried about what else may have been coursing through that blood and potentially now in me.

I go to the ER. Luckily they jump me ahead of the queue, but it still takes a while because some psycho was screaming she was being tortured two rooms over. The nurse draws my blood and skewers the crap out of my arm getting a vein. They gave me some antiretrovirals and basically made me sit for two hours. Turned out our hospital information system was down, so no results would be coming back anytime soon. It was way past my shift's end. I hadn't eaten in 10 hours and people were trying to figure out how to discharge me without a computer.

I got no sleep last night. My mind was telling me that there was an extremely low chance I got crudded up, but just couldn't stop worrying about it. This week was pretty crappy for a number of reasons, but this was diarrhea on my cocoa Pebbles. I spent my entire day off (my first in 8 days) dealing with this. Finally got the labs back a few hours ago and I'm happy to report he patient doesn't have HepC or HIV. Now I gotta go back tomorrow and tell my attending what happened and hope I don't catch hell for it (despite everybody's assurance I'm fine).

But really I'm just thankful I didn't contract something I have to worry about passing onto my family and that my career isn't over before it started.

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The Dude abides.

Holy crap! Your mind must have been going warp speed. Glad it came out okay.

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Raell Kromwell

Glad you're ok. Hope you get some real sleep soon!

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

Wow. That's rough.

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So glad I don't deal with this any more.



A military hospital, eh?

In all seriousness, glad it worked out. That stuff is scary.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."