Living Without HepC

I said last week that I would follow up on the issue of swabbing the skin with alcohol, or not, before an injection. I have spoken with Mynurse again about this - after she had checked with other specialists in this area. From what I understand, there is no clear or universal response on swabbing with alcohol before injection.

What Mynurse pointed out is that some professionals take the view that washing the site with alcohol better protects against infection. However, the alcohol must be allowed to dry for over a minute, otherwise the alcohol enters the body when the skin is pierced by the needle tip. Often people don’t wait long enough and experience the stinging of the alcohol during the injection.

The argument against swabbing is that wiping the area with alcohol removes the natural flora on the skin surface - to some extent removing the ‘natural’ protection which is also useful to protect against infection. She also pointed out wiping the syringe tip with anything undermines its previous sterile condition and, if the wipe has just removed flora from the skin surface, this too can be transferred to the syringe point increasing the risk that this is inserted into the body with the needle tip.

Mynurse also said that research shows there isn’t a significant difference in outcome between the two approaches in effectiveness of preventing infections.

However, as Mynurse points out there are pros and cons to both approaches - and different medical units have their own views and policies around swabbing before injection. While this doesn’t produce a definitive answer to the issue I think it highlights the issues involved!

As I write this today I am aware that I have just not been ‘firing on all cylinders’ today. It is another one of ‘those’ days. The day after my injection. (I am not going to say this is a pattern now - too many times I have thought I see a pattern, only to discover a contradiction.) Despite feeling like this, I have attended a business meeting already this afternoon and am about to see clients for counselling. I feel I can carry out my commitments for the day but it certainly feels like I have ‘less energy’ than I had yesterday - and I hope I will have tomorrow!

I spoke with Gemma yesterday by phone - arranging some filming for tomorrow at the media event. I can empathise with her feeling some apprehension about herself for the day - she is due for injection this evening and she HAS spotted a pattern of feeling rough the next day. So she is concerned that the media event, and her film project, need her attention on a day when she forecasts she won’t be feeling well. I suspect this is a dilemma for all of us on this treatment. It’s difficult to plan ‘everyday life’ when one never knows if that could prove to be a ‘bad day’, or the event falls on a day when one can guess it could be a ‘bad day’.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 15th, 2005 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Announcements. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.