doc sorrow

NEEDLESTUCK’D!

Last Wednesday, a patient I was injecting jumped as I pulled out the needle and I got the damn thing right in the meat of my hand. Four hours later, I began post-exposure prophylaxis. First you get tested for HIV, Hep B & C to make sure you don’t already have all that shit. Then you get Hepatitis immunoglobulins, which are exactly what they sound like—goblins that go into your immune system and fight the Hepatitis virus with swords. Then you are given a 28-day regimen of HIV meds. You’ve heard of empathizing with your patients, but this is ridiculous! I went to pick up the medications and asked the pharmacist, “How much are these going to cost?” She said, “I’ll look it up…” and clicked around for a couple seconds. “Wow…(long pause, gets pen) Let me write that down for you.” 

When I went in for the intake, the nurse put a hand on my shoulder and told me that it happens to everyone. In fact, she’d had it happen to her 3 times. “Two of those times it was HIV positive patients in corrections stabbing me with their needles.” Yeah? “Yeah. I’ve lasted five days on the PEP. That’s the best I could do.” Not to be a blow-hard, but this is a woman was stabbed with a hypodermic, on purpose, by a HIV+ person, presumably returning to her job after this incident, to have the same thing happen, behavior from which we can draw the conclusion that she is fucking tough as shit, and she said “fuck it” to the regimen after 5 days. It really sucks.

Post-exposure prophylaxis is often abbreviated as “PEP,” misleading unless by “peppy” (PEP-y?) you mean you feel as if you are Distinguished Captain briskly sailing your very own Yacht of Desperately Trying To Not Vomit through an intense brain fog on a sea made of muscle pain. And chainsaws. It’s 6 monster pills a day. I take 2 fat orange Kaletra twice a day and one big blue Truvada at noon. For me, the brain fog is the worst—if I don’t rest, my baseline of “what is the name of the—fuck.” worsens to a hammering, frustrating “3/4ths of the way through the crossword and I could solve it if I just knew this four-letter—fuuuuuckkk.” Counterpoint, everything kind of looks like this now:

I think that means that it’s working?