God bless my immune system

I have my dream clinical this quarter - My patients are a party mix of buggies: tuberculosis, varicella zoster, tinea (fungus), osteomyelitis (bone infection), Clostridium dificile, herpes, and lord knows what else. I didn't have much of a chance today to do anything more than follow my nurse around, but I'm excited to start digging into their lab results and examining their scaly skin/fingernails/hair/etc. Whee!

Sometimes, the reality of getting what you want isn't quite so nice as it is in theory. It's awesome to see these infested patients....not so awesome to imagine all those little buggies hopping onto me, my clothes, my food, my hair. And so, as I sit here and type this entry I'm trying to remember if I cleaned my hands before or after I touched the elevator button and whether I need to mop the floor of the bathroom where my clinical clothes touched it. I notice that my arms are kind of itchy and my hand tingles and my throat is scratchy. I'm up for the 12 hour days and long lists of meds this clinical's going to take - I hope my immune system is too.