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By REBECCA FATER
Lowell Sun (Massachusetts)
BOSTON - Thanksgiving was just a week away, and Fitchburg paramedic Darrell Demers had everything to look forward to.
But when the father of three responded to a serious car accident on Main Street last November, all it took was a moment for his perspective to change dramatically.
Demers, who was wearing sterile gloves, cut his hand on a shard of window glass while climbing into the rear of the car to treat a patient.
“I felt the sting, but I was so concentrating on taking care of this guy,” he remembers. “Next thing I knew, my hand was full of blood.”
Demers was sure the patient’s blood had come into contact with his own wound. But he didn’t know whether the man, who lay unconscious at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, was infected with HIV.
It was a worry he took home with him that night, and continues to carry to this day, as he awaits his next scheduled HIV screening test in May.
“It’s always in the back of my mind,” said Demers, 38, who lives in Fitchburg and works for Patriot Ambulance.
State law requires a person to give permission for their blood to be tested -- a requirement impossible to produce from Demers’ patient, who lay in a coma.
Demers said he had no choice but to take a monthlong cocktail of preventative drugs -- five pills, three times per day -- as well as get tested periodically for HIV, which can take months after exposure before doctors can detect it.
And if not knowing wasn’t bad enough, the side effects of the drugs, which left Demers nauseous and feeling like he had a hangover, made the experience thoroughly miserable.
Frustrated with the law, Demers approached Rep. Emile Goguen for help. The Fitchburg Democrat filed a bill that would require a patient whose blood has come into contact with another to be tested, regardless of that patient’s inability to consent or refuse to be tested.
The result of that test would be shared with the person who came into contact with that patient’s blood, the bill states.
"(Exposure) could happen anytime,” Goguen said. “It could happen in any accident.”
It is possible the bill’s language will be adjusted, Goguen said, adding there may be a question of the patient’s right to privacy.