Juan del Real

On Saturday, I went shopping at Nordstrom Rack in San Francisco. My wife and I frequent this store every so often. While looking around in the men’s department, I saw a stack of dress shirts that I liked. As I grabbed the one on top, something beneath the folded shirt pricked my middle finger. I let go of the shirt and figure that it was one of the dozen-or-so pins used to keep shirts folded. I carefully turned the shirt over and saw a pin sticking out as I expected, but I also saw something I wasn’t expecting which shocked me - a lot of dried blood on the shirt. Someone else had pricked themselves with that pin and bled. I then noticed more dried blood on another shirt’s tag.

I got upset right away as thoughts of being stung by a possibly contamitated pin ran through my head. I motioned to my wife who was looking at other items nearby to come over and I showed her what just happened. I then went looking for an employee to show them what had happened. I found one in the fitting rooms helping another customer. When she was done, I showed and tried to explain what had happened, but she immediately ran to get a band-aid. She thought I was the one who had bled. When she returned I let her put the band-aid on me, but I still wasn’t able to explain to her what happened because she wouldn’t shut up and her English comprehension wasn’t that great. She kept saying “Its ok, this happens all the time to me.” I’m sure she gets pricked by pins, but not by pins with blood on them. By then I was mad and I just wanted to get out of the store.

When I got home I called Kaiser and talked to an Advice Nurse. I figured I would need a shot of something. After I told her what happened, she set up an appointment for me to be seen by a doctor immediately. She said such incidents need to be treated within the first four hours. When I arrived at Kaiser, I was admitted immediately and was seen by the doctor. He examined my finger and looked over medical record. Due to the vaccines I’ve gotten in recent years, he figured the risk of me contracting something serious was low, but advised that I get a tetanus shot - which I did.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 7th, 2006 at 11:55 pm and is filed under General.