Confessions of a germophobe

Today I had my annual gynecological exam. Yes, women, smart women have preventative gyno exams once a year. Deal with it.

So, I'm waiting for the doctor to come in when the nurse comes back into the office to :"check something:"

She meddles with the tray with plastic gloves and swabs and such wonderful things :(

Then she leaves the room, and I notice that she touched the door knob twice and didn't wear gloves, and didn't wash hands before touching the gloves my gynecologist is going to examine me with.

The following is my train of thoughts from that moment until the doctor walked in:

Should I throw those gloves away and put new ones on the tray? But I have to wash my hands first. I can do that, there's a sink and soap, even Purell. Oh, I'll be fine. But what if I'm not? I'm in a hospital and these knobs carry some probably very angry germs. Hah, I'll be fine, I haven't even seen until now what they do with the gloves and swabs and I have always been fine. But this one time, what if I don't do anything and then I catch some...uterine virus...or some infection...or parasite...."

At that moment, I decide to act. So I get up from my bed, but not before I put my socked feet into my Chucks, because God knows what's on the floor, and wobble to the tray with gloves. I grab them, throw them into the bin with a "hazardous material" sign, wash my hands quickly, Purell them as well, just in case, pull other two, three gloves out of the glove box with my two fingers, put them on the tray and as I'm dropping them down, my doctor walks in.
I smile and walk back to lay down.
I don't think she noticed that I'm a bit crazy.

Yes, my friends, I am a germophobe.

And I'm getting worse with age.

And behind it all is a fear of getting sick, and a strong belief that I would get sick if I don't wash my hands, or other people don't wash theirs. So, I would rather be safe than sorry.

I'm actually proud of doing what I did. I should have also probably reported the nurse who touches the knobs then gloves for internal exams. But then again, maybe gloves cannot transfer germs. Can they?