[Question #14127] Dr Hook, Exposure? Risk?

2 hours ago

My prolapsed hemorrhoids were actively oozing blood/mucus into my underwear. At a bar, the bartender broke glass and likely bled on a pen. Within seconds, my unwashed fingers touched the pen, then pushed my hemorrhoids back inside through my wet underwear. I repeated this multiple times after touching bar items, then sat flat on that wet underwear spot for an hour. Did fresh blood transfer to my fingers, mix with my fluid on the fabric, and infect my exposed raw tissue? Did sitting pressure force contaminants inward? HIV/Hep risk?

H. Hunter Handsfield, MD

43 minutes ago

Welcome to the forum. FYI, users do not have the options of selecting the responding moderators. But rest assured: Dr. Hook and I have been close colleagues for decades and our knowledge and advice never differ from one another.

Nobody has ever been known to acquire any blood borne infection -- HIV, viral hepatitis, or any other -- from s such contact. Anyway, probably the bartender wasn't infected; if he was, you don't apparently know that he cut himself or if so that he got blood on the pen; your contact with the pen seems to have been fleeting; and even if all these issues broke the "wrong" way, I don't see how enough blood could be transferred to have risked you being infected. Finally, these viruses cannot be transmitted through fabric and cannot envision that pressure from sitting had any effect. I see no possibility of infection risk and would advise you not to worry at all about this.

I hope these comments are helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD

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