I'm so ashamed

Post Reply New Topic

Now, I've always had a fear of human blood, but a few days ago, someone got a paper cut. He asked if anyone had a bandaid, and I did. I gave him one, then I remembered he was HIV+. I have always liked to think of myself as a person governed more by intellect and facts than paranoias/propogandas, which is why I'm so ashamed of myself. I'm perfectly aware of how HIV is transmitted. Would you believe when I remembered, I suddenly thought 'I gave him the bandaid, he was bleeding', 'wait, he cut himself on one of the papers in that same binder I'm going to go through to file them tomorrow', and other such dumb things. I'm just so angry I could ever have thought anything like that! That such thoughts could have gone through my mind. Just how could I? I'm still upset. I've read, I'm perfectly aware that you can not get HIV from casual contact, yet, I still had that one small panic. I'm such a fool.

I don't think you should be too hard on yourself. Since HIV is such a dangerous and incurable infection, it's normal to have a great deal of anxiety over it, even if you're educated on the facts surrounding it. To be honest, I probably would have momentarily felt the same way, even though I know better.

No, no, don't be upset. You're not the only one who would have thought that. I would have the same concern.

I was working with some blood samples and a glass tube shattered in my hand leaving a small cut. I looked up the case history and he had undergone HIV testing. It was kind of scary. I ended up having to get screened for it and fortunately it came back clean, but I understand your fears.

Still the HIV virus doesn't survive well at all in the environment and you can't absorb it through your skin, so you are perfectly safe. If it makes you feel better, you can take a 5% bleach solution (in water) and wipe your notebook off--that will pretty much destroy any pathogen.

OMG! I would so have panicked if that had happened to me.

I understand your reaction.

One of my aunts who used to be a midwife was viciously assualted by a pregnant heroin addict in Glasgow who was HIV+. She cut her arm open and bit right into the open wound. The event and the prospect of becoming HIV+ herself was so traumatic for her she suffered a nervous breakdown and had to take early retirement from the trauma. Thankfully despite the bodily fluid contact of her ordeal the virus was not passed onto her.

Your reasoning sounds like my thought patterns with ocd germ stuff. I would have had the same thoughts, even the ones that told me the paranoia was silly.

I had a friend who was a nurse who over the course of her career was accidentally stuck two times with a needle that had been used on HIV+ patients. She didn't contract the virus and said more often than not, with accidents like that the person doesn't contract it.

at least you would have got it the good way through an accident, not the bad way, sex or needles. You would have died pure.