Turning 40: Notes to My Younger Self. #18 Needle Stick

#18. Needle Stick

It was a code much like any other. Well run, only mildly chaotic. Compressions, drugs, team work, communication.

It ended as they often do, except for one fact. I got stuck.

It happens in health care. Not often, but more often than we would like to admit: needle stick, eye splash, skin exposure. The main concern is HIV, Hepatitis C, and Hepatitis B.

So, we had to report it to the hospital. I had to go to the ER. We had to draw my blood. We had to draw the patient’s blood.

I was negative for all three, no surprise.

The patient was negative for two. The patient was positive for one. The patient was positive for HIV.

Unfortunately, this was not the first time I have had an exposure. Fortunately, this was the first time I had actually been exposed to an infectious pathogen.

They wrote me a prescription in the ER for daily meds, a time to follow up with blood draws, and sent me on my way.

I filled my two prescriptions and paid $50 for each one, I was out $100 bucks.

Initially, I was irritated at the cost of the drugs. What an imposition this whole fiasco had been. What a nuisance. What a burden.

And this, my younger self, is what I want you to understand. It is important that you do not become flippant. There was a time when people would have paid millions of dollars, mortgaged their homes, sold their organs, and literally done any extreme thing to not contract this illness. You live in a time where HIV has become a chronic illness and not a death sentence.

There are many many things about health care that are broken and many things about insurance that make no sense.

But there are a lot of good things that work.

At a time in the world when you only have to pay $100 for radical medications that were not even available too many years ago, I implore you to be thankful and not irritated or burdened.

We have chosen to live a life of service and to work in a service profession. It is a beautiful work that we are honored to do. There will be “fiasco's”. But there will always be good. Find the good.