‘It was like being handed a death sentence,’ nurse says
July 1, 2002 3 minutes read
It was like being handed a death sentence,’ nurse says
Needlestick leaves nurse with anguish of HCV
It was a swift, sudden movement, so quick that no one could imagine it one day would bring so much anguish. Chris Jordan, RNC, was drawing blood from a newborn in the neonatal intensive care unit when she suffered a needlestick.
This tiny baby had been born healthy, but while breast-feeding him in bed, his mother had fallen asleep and accidentally suffocated him. He was brain dead but was being kept alive while the mother struggled to cope with the reality of his death. In those few days, the baby received blood products to keep him alive.
"The mother came into the room, unbeknownst to me. She walked behind me and tapped me on the shoulder," recalls Jordan, 51, who lives in Corona, CA. "It startled me, and I turned and ended up sticking myself."
Jordan had completed the blood collection and was about to put the butterfly device into a disposal container when she was stuck. With current safety technology, the needle would have been sheathed, retracted, or blunted, says Jordan.
Still a pediatric intensive care nurse, Jordan tells her story to underscore the importance of safer needle devices. She is not just a statistic; she is a casualty. "If I had a safety needle, my chance of getting stuck would have been 80% less," she said at a recent teleconference sponsored by the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners in Cherry Hill, NJ.
Jordan has been stuck only three times in her 10 years at a large teaching hospital. For many of those years, no test was available for hepatitis C. In 1996, Jordan received baseline testing when she was stuck while caring for a baby who was known to be positive for both hepatitis B and C. The baseline test showed she was already infected with HCV. She distinctly remembered the two other needlesticks she had incurred (and reported), and although she can’t prove it, she believes the brain-dead infant was the one that infected her.
The news that she tested positive for HCV was devastating. "I remember that day very clearly," she says. "It was like being handed a death sentence. I was told I had this antibody in my blood system. I drove home in tears that day.
"I’m a single parent, and I have two children. All I could think about was, What if I can’t work? Who’s going to take care of my kids?’"
Jordan sank into a serious depression, but managed to keep on working as a pediatric nurse. She declined treatment with ribavirin and interferon, fearing the side effects. "I started reading the literature and found the most success with treatment is when you first seroconvert to hepatitis C," she says.
Jordan has other nursing friends who contracted HCV from needlesticks. One is on a liver transplant list, the other is undergoing his third round of treatment. Although she feels lucky that her symptoms haven’t been as severe, she says, "this whole thing has taken a toll."
"I get very, very tired some days. Other days I feel fine," she says. "The days I’m tired, I find I can’t work regular 12-hour shifts consecutively. I have to work every other day or every third day.
In speaking about her experience, she hopes to make a difference in preventing needlesticks. She looks to the future, hoping to maintain her health. She has remarried, and now has a granddaughter. She wonders, "Will I get to see her grow up?"
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