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I as well can tell you about post exposure meds suck. I was a TB converter and I took the meds for 6 months and now I have to get a chest x-ray every year to prove I'm not TB positive even with NO symptoms. Now that we get more information about your lackadasical use of gloves, Grow a brain and start to wear them on all calls. Island was easy on you but your flippant attitude of only wearing gloves if you know they are infectious is STUPID and will get you killed. Please let me put you in touch with one of my friends(I have two) who is on the liver transplant list up here in Maryland. He also had a flippant thought process of wearing gloves and got a minor exposure, he got hepatitis C - non-diagnosed over a period of about 8 years and just recently it's come back to bite him big time into needing a new liver. He has cost his health care insurer and old employer thousands of dollars in medical bills that may not have ever been needed if he had used gloves. He never got a needlestick but he did have a couple of abrasions on his hands and got some blood on them. He cleaned his hands with hand sanitizer but it was too late. He will more than likely die soon due to the fact that he is a poor match to anything but a very good donor. So if you choose to not wear gloves, then that's your decision but don't come back here crying about being exposed and getting some sort of nasty disease, not after we have heard from Mari that you don't wear gloves unless you know they are infected. Up until 3 years ago, you would never know that my friend had Hep C and if you got his blood on you, you WOULD have gotten HEP C but then again, you would have somehow known that he was infected RIGHT???????. He looked very healthy. so my advice is as follows 1. Start wearing gloves on any and every single call. 2. Report this exposure - if you don't then you might not be covered if you end up being infected 3. Go back and review your EMT/Medic book on infectious diseases and exposure - sounds like you need a refresher 4. Go back and re-take your companies Bloodborne pathogens and exposure course. You sound like you need a refresher on your company policy as well. Stop being the HERO and get rid of the thinking that you are invincible - you won't believe how small something is that can kill you or permanently disable you - it's not the big things that sometimes hurt you the most. But above all get rid of the "I don't wear gloves unless I know they are infected" belief - that's going to kill you.

I think everyone just wants you to be informed of the decision you are making. I wish I had heard half of what this board has to say before I became an EMT, just because when I started I wouldn't have been so surprised at what we actually do. I recently ran a hard call and because of that I want to tell you to run away, because right now I want to run away. We do things that change people's lives. Even when there is nothing we can do, we still become the person that tells someone that their mother is dead, or their child is dead. We become the person that the family hates, or loves. It is a huge responsibility for anyone. So, don't take their advice as an insult, take it as some people with quite a bit of experience trying to help you make the most informed decision you can.