I'm in a rut I'm trying to break out of. A school rut. A schedule rut. A rut that doesn't allow time for blogging. But I'm making time now.

We have our big cardio exam on Friday, for which I am ill-prepared. An understatement, for sure. It's difficult to study for cardio, because a lot of the heart's disease processes seem very straightforward. I mean, atherosclerosis... I know what that is. Heart attacks... I understand those. But of course I don't, really. It takes a lot of motivation to get into the nitty gritty of each thing. Also, I'm just kind of lazy.

As the student leader for our school's LGBT group I helped organize a community-service project for this weekend's Outfest celebration. We gave hepatitis vaccinations. There were three med students and one faculty advisor (an infectious disease doctor who is also our group's advisor). It was pretty nice, because eleven students ended up volunteering. I scheduled everyone for ninety-minute blocks. None of us had ever given a shot before, so that was pretty exciting/terrifying.

My first shot went great. My second shot went great. Then Drew came and I gave him a shot. I hadn't screwed the needle on tightly enough, so I think probably only 75% of the vaccine actually made it into his arm. The rest dripped onto his chair. He was sweet, though, and didn't call me out on it in front of my classmates. For the fourth shot I wanted to be sure that didn't happen. The guy was very nice, and as he and I were chatting I screwed the needle on as tightly as I could. But then I couldn't get the cap off. I pulled and pulled and when I finally managed to pop it off, I stuck the needle into my thumb.

It hadn't been exposed to any blood yet, so don't worry. I had just pulled it out of the wrapper seconds before it went into my hand.

The guy said, "Whoa, careful there." I looked at the syringe and the needle was all bent. "Well, I guess we'll call that a loss," I said as I threw it into the sharps container and got another needle. The guy laughed, I gave him his shot with a fresh needle and that was that.

However, later I got a little freaked out because I realized I had come very close to making a huge mistake. I chose not to use the needle I'd stuck myself with because it was bent. Had it not been bent, though, I may have given this guy a vaccination with it. BUT IT HAD JUST BEEN EXPOSED TO MY BLOOD. That would have been an insanely stupid thing to do, and had I made that mistake it would have been entirely because I was nervous and unsure of myself. Those excuses aside, that's exactly the kind of thing I hope I never, ever do. Scary.