Blood Draw Anxiety

[lana8900]

Can I just say that I hate LabCorp? Unfortunately, it is the only place where I can get blood drawn with my insurance. I have had some worrisome experience at LabCorp in the past, and have reached out to the company to follow up with the poor practices I have experienced.

So on to what happened yesterday. I went in for some blood work, I was the first one in the morning but I noticed a small circle of dried blood in the tray attached to the chair. She used some gauze and alcohol pad and wiped it away with her bare hands. She then proceeded to put my blood vials and gauze in the same tray, without washing her hands. She put some gloves on and tore off the finger of the pointer finger on the hand that wiped the blood away to palpate for a vein, after she grabbed one of two tourniquets that were sitting in the tray already and tied it around my arm, then proceeded to wipe my arm with a dry alcohol swab. Before I could say that it was dry, she felt my vein again and began to draw my blood. She grabbed the gauze from the tray that had the dry blood, and pressed the side that was against the tray onto my puncture and bandaged it off.

Yes, I have anxiety. Yes, I am being treated. But still, experiences like this leave me feeling horrible for days or even weeks after.

I just need to know if there is any possible risk associated with what happened? Since I saw actual dried blood that could have made it's way to my skin via her bare finger prior to the needle entering my bloodstream.

Thank you.

[Lynn K]

No i very much doubt it.

I’m sort of thinking it could be your anxiety coloring your experiences of what you see. Was there blood there could it have been something else? If you are seeing a counselor for your anxiety what do they say when you discuss these occurrences? They are in the medical field what would they think of your assessment of this situation and your risk?

I go to lab Corp every six months to monitor my liver disease. Before I was diagnosed with hep c I very seldom had blood testing done.

I’m kind of wondering why you are having blood testing performed?

To the best of my knowledge there is no evidence of anyone contracting hep c through medical blood testing having blood draws done.

[lana8900]

Thank you for your reply!

It was definitely blood, I'm just hyper aware of my surroundings because of my OCD/Anxiety. Honestly, a lot of mental health specialists don't really understand my fears and I guess it is kind of hard to understand from the outside.

I'm getting blood work done because I have something called Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. I just started seeing an Endocrinologist for it and had to get a lot of initial blood work done. I actually put it off for awhile because I hate getting my blood drawn due to my anxiety. 

[Lynn K]

Ok fair enough I know some folks with  medical anxiety often get medical testing done because they’re afraid they’ve contracted something. So it is reasonable for you to have this testing done. Still there are no known incidents of hep c being contracted in this way. 

I’m sure I may have said before even a medical worker who has a needlestick involving a patient with known hepatitis C so fresh blood immediately being immediately injected into their blood stream there’s only a 1.8% chance of infection. Obviously since you don’t know that this was hepatitis C infected blood since less than 3% of the population even has hep c and it’s doubtful that it entered your bloodstream then your odds of transmission would be significantly below that 1.8%