Relief ...

I work in a field that some nurses and healthcare workers are afraid to work in ... I work with the people society rejects ... sometimes those that the CDC puts in quarantine ... I work with people who have infectious diseases ... mostly non-tuberculosis mycobacterial infections (in other words bacteria that pretend to be tuberculosis) ... but I also work with people that have tuberculosis ... people that are HIV+ and those that have full blown AIDS ... patients that have Hep C and C Diff and a whole slew of other things the public has never heard of ... I work with people that have MRSA that can't be stopped ...

I hate what society does to these people ... I hate the lack of education that the general public has ... and I don't hate a lot of things ... but still I find this weakness in myself ....

I know ... logically ... I know that I take every precaution, follow every rule (and still do my best to make sure that the patients still feel a human connection) ... I do everything to protect myself ... yet every four months when I come up for testing ... I am always relieved to get the negative results ... despite knowing I was never at risk ... to see the negative TB test ... I can breathe easier for a while ... the silver lining of course is that it always is negative ...