Scrape on my Knuckle

[WaywardGhost]

Hello,

I hope everyone is having a nice week.

I decided to do some shopping tonight and visited a mall near here where I live. It has been raining heavily, enough that I needed to use an umbrella while I have been out and about.

As I walked into the mall I noticed they had an "umbrella bag stand" where you can essentially wrap your wet umbrella in a plastic bag to prevent it dripping on the floor. I decided to do the conscientious thing and wrap my umbrella, which involves dipping it inside the stand and into the bag. As I did this my knuckle scraped on a piece of metal on the stand. I felt a bit of pain and although the skin was clearly broken, at first there was no blood.

I proceeded into the mall and within thirty seconds to a minute my knuckle started to bleed, and continued to do so for a very short time. There was never really a lot of blood. About ten minutes after the scrape occurred, I bathed the area of broken skin with hand sanitizer and shrugged it off.

As I was exiting the mall it occurred to me that if I had cut my skin doing something so straight-forward with this bag stand, other people probably have too. With this in mind, I checked the stand, and sure enough I saw (what looked like) dried blood on another bag inside the stand.

There seems to be a lot of misinformation regarding Hepatitis C on the internet, and I made the mistake of researching the possibility of infection with this virus from what happened to me.

Sufficed to say, I am now left with confusion over the possibility of infection.

I was hoping anyone here had some good insight into the risk from what I describe?

Thanks in advance.

[Lynn K]

Hi

So only about 1% of the population is infected with hep c so your odds of having randomly encountering someone infected with hep c is relatively low. Add to that the odds that one of those 1% happened to accidently scratch themselves shortly before you did the same are bordering on astronomically small. Then add to that an example of a situation of when a health care worker should experience an accidental needle stick involving a patient with known hep c infection their odds of transmission are only about 1.8%

So while there is theoretical but very, very small risk I sincerely doubt you are at risk in this situation. If you have concerns you can always wait 12 weeks and be tested for hep c antibodies. They you will know if this resulted in an exposure or for that matter anytime in the past.

If you should ever in your life learn you are infected with hep c there are very good treatments now available that cure the majority of patients and are in general very well tolerated. Treatment today can be as simple as one pill a day for as few as 8 weeks and the patient can be cured. So if you ever do become infected most can easily be cured. Hep c is no longer as scary of an illness as it was in the past.

But again I doubt you are at risk.

However for an educated answer it is always best to ask your doctor. This is a support forum and most people here are lay persons. We are a community of patients who either are currently or were formerly infected with Hepatitis c. We can’t offer diagnosis or medical advice.

Good luck

[WaywardGhost]

Thank you very much for the quick and honest reply, I really appreciate it.

Yeah, I kind of realised my imagination was going into over-drive. I am your typical risk-adverse person who frets over seemly small possibilities. My ex-partner has gone so far as to describe me as "OCD."

The good news is as an older, wiser version of myself I am completely aware of this tendency and I can usually get a handle on it before it becomes a source of serious worry.

The chances of me getting hit by a car tomorrow on my way to work are probably much, much greater than the chance this random incident caused infection. But I guess the fact that I didn't see it coming "triggered" my paranoid side.

Thanks again and have a great night.

[Lynn K]

Since this seems to be a reoccurring issue for you have you considered counseling or possibly medicines to help you better cope in the future when these feelings and worries arise? Sure you can tough it out but wouldn’t it be better not to have to?

Just a thought unless you are already being treated.

Best of luck to you