My nephew was in the lab at school yesterday and he was holding a tube of blood. SOMEHOW (I haven't had chance to talk to his mom....just going by what my mother in law told me) the tube broke, cut through his glove and cut his finger. Long story short, the blood was HIV infected. School is saying that they don't know HOW the blood got into the lab. That's a whole other story though...
He went to the hospital and they have him on some medication. Does anyone have any idea what the name of it would be? My mil said that it's the same medication that HIV infected patients take but that she can't remember the name of it. The side effects are supposedly awful. I want to do a search on the medication. I think she said he will take it for a month.
***Edited to say that my nephew is 21. This happened at his college campus lab***
No, not high school....college age. They said that HIV tainted blood is not supposed to be in their campus labs though.
Sorry if I'm a little dense, but I'm not quite sure what happened. Is he a student in a laboratory methods course, and was stuck handling a "known" specimen that he was supposed to be analyzing?
Or does he work in the student health center, and was stuck handling a recently-drawn specimen of blood? If the latter is the case, how would anyone know the HIV status of the patient from whom the blood was drawn?
I'm just as confused. This is my nephew by marriage and I'm not very close to him or his parents. I see them on holidays when we go to my inlaws and stuff like that. I think he's going for something like Biochemistry.
My mother in law just said that his class was in lab and he was holding a tube of blood. Somehow it broke and cut through his glove, cutting him.
There are several things that I don't understand.
A few being: HOW did it break while he was holding it?
The school said that there was a "mix up" with the blood because HIV blood wasn't supposed to be in the school lab. So, HOW did it get mixed up?
There are a lot of unanswered questions that I would like to ask, but they seem to not want to talk about it, so I feel like I should stay out of it for the time being. I just feel so bad for him.
NicInNC, CNA
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