I know from reading several of these posts, people tend to ask questions about their risk of HIV exposure even when they are likely not at risk. I am one of those people. I have OCD and one of my biggest obsessions has been the fear of contracting HIV.

So, here is my situation. I work in retail and yesterday, this man (and I don't mean to be rude or judgmental, but he was obviously homosexual) came in to pick up furniture that he had ordered. I looked at his receipt and then went into the stockroom to bring out the furniture for him. It took maybe 5-10 minutes for me to bring it out. He was browsing at the time and I don't remember how long it was until he came back up to my register, but it was probably less than 15 minutes from the time I first spoke to him. I took his receipt again because I had to mark off the items that he had picked up. When I got the receipt, I noticed that this time there was blood on it. This blood, I know for sure had not been there before. I only noticed it in the middle of the receipt, where the text of his items were, but I didn't examine it. I have no idea if I even actually touched these spots of blood or if there were any other spots.

Because of my OCD, I tend to wash my hands a lot. Washing my hands makes them very dry and sometimes they crack. I know for sure that I had a healing cut on my finger and I'm sure I had some cracks also. None of these were actively bleeding.

I washed my hands right after the man left, but the anxiety lingers.

How worried should I be?

I'd say the chances are extremely slim to none. Unless you have a fresh, actively bleeding cut on your finger, and the blood from an HIV infected person came into direct contact with that cut, then the chances are very small.

Dont be worried at all. If HIV was this easy to catch, we would ALL have it! H

Thank you both. I'm sure it gets annoying to have to repeat the same things over and over, but OCD is irrational, even if I know it, I still need reassurance.

Thanks again. :)