The hell of needlestick injury

Sometimes you can feel that bad things are gonna happen. The small clues are there, you feel the déjà vu feelings but you choose to ignore it.


My car was chased by some stupid dogs that morning, I was unable to eat my breakfast due to overflowing workloads and patients who keep pulling out their branulas (God bless them), and while taking blood from a new patient I had a flashback of a close call from almost getting a needle prick injury.

And then it happened.

I pricked my thumb while pulling away the blood bottle from the vacutainer’s end; did not notice that the needle was already protruding from the rubber tubing.

Then everything else was a blur.

I remembered washing and squeezing everything out from my thumb under running water for ten minutes, informing the nurse, notifying my specialist, going to ED to register my name and had my blood taken, clerked my own history into the file as ED was freaking busy then went home.

The specialist started me on HAART straight-away because the patient was HIV positive with hepatitis C.

So now I am on HAART and have been shitting my guts out thanks to the side effect.

I got a free leave, my viva was postponed.

Housemen, welcome to the hell of needlestick injury.