needlestick injury (medical worker) - TheBody.com's Bulletin Boards

I know my risk is extremely low, but the more reassurance I get, the better I feel. I work for a medical device reprocessing company and we collect single used devices from the operating room. I was picking up a container one day and a syringe (that should have been in the sharps container) stuck the side of my index finger. I bled and quickly washed and applied iodine solution.

Now, here are all the facts. The needle was a small 25 gauge needle that was almost completely full of clear fluid. The fact that the syringe was almost completely full makes me think it was not used. Also - the fluid was completely clear - no tint of pink/red from blood. We only pick up containers from this specific hospital once every 60 days - meaning it could be anywhere from 1 day old to 60 days old, but it was towards the bottom of the container so it was probably not too recently used. After getting stuck I looked at the syringe and saw no visible blood, and when I pressed on the syringe only clear liquid came out - no blood. Further, this was for a day surgery section at the hospital - they have no trama and every patient is screened beforehand. They also rarely take infectious patients (they send them to the main hospital across the street).

I took truvada and azt for 2 days after the incident, but felt too ill and decided my risk was low enough to stop taking the medication.

I had a full physical exactly 28 days after the exposure (26 days since I stopped the PEPs).

I tested negative for HIV/hepatitis/lyme. The lyme western blot proved igM negative and igG negative for lyme disease, but the ELISA lyme igM test was positive - false positives can be caused for a number of reasons - including viruses.

I understand 28 days (actually 26 days because I was on PEPs for 2 days) to test for HIV is a little early - I'm just afraid that I haven't seroconverted yet and that's why the ELISA igM was a false positive - igM is the antibody to test for recently infections.

Like i've said - physically I feel great and now it's actually 33 days since I was possibly exposed.

Can someone offer reassurance?

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