safety concerns with doctors and recent AIDS scare

One thing that I do to keep myself grateful to have a busy Dr. husband is compare myself to the ladies whose husbands are deployed in the military. I think to myself "at least my husband is nearby, at least I could get in contact with him if I had a real emergency, at least I know he is safe and not in harms way....."

Well, there are three safety concerns with Drs which are very serious and leave us dr. wives up worrying at night.
 #1. Driving when completely exhaused. There are several resident deaths every year reported. Even with the changes in work hours to try to limit time in the hospital, it is just the nature of the profession that Dr's work to exhaustion sometimes. We had one resident in our program fall asleep at the wheel and fortunately for him, he was not seriously injured. Dave has never fallen asleep as far as I know. Once he was too tired to drive home so we went to pick him up at the hospital.  Once Dan picked him up at the hostpial. Other than that, he braves the road by himself and uses tactics such as open windows, snacks, radio, needing to go to the bathroom, etc. to keep himself awake. 
#2. Driving in the middle of the night. Some of the worst accidents Dave reported seeing in his experience as a dr. on call were car accidents where a truck got on the road going the wrong way in the middle of the night or a drunk driver wreaking havock in the middle of the night. When a dr. gets paged in at 3am, you know that there is nobody on the road besides the truck drivers and the people who have been out partying all night.  Dave is a very defensive driver at night but it is always a concern that he will be hit by somebody who should not be on the road at those hours.
#3. Exposure to patient diseases in the Operating Room (OR) and in the hosptial. I usually only worry about Dave bringing home germs when I have a newborn baby. Aside from those times I am usually a tiny bit understanding about daves disgusting scrubs and shoes all over the house.  The second and very serious exposure comes in the OR when operating on "dirty" patients with Hepititus C and HIV.  I apologize in advance for my very unsympathetic view of life but I hate that Dave has to work on patients who are prisoners, drug seekers and totally ridden with diseases which they have earned through thier their filthy lifesytle.  About 6 weeks ago Dave was nicked with a bloody scalpel while operating on one such dualy diseased patient (HIV and HEPC).  He scrubbed out and checked his gloves and sure enough he had a small nick on his knucle. His attending (who was not supposed to have a scalpel in the field while Dave was inserting a rod into some spine screws) apologized and took him to the ER. There is a protocol for such accidents and Dave spent the rest of the day doing paper work and other appointments. He had his blood tested to make sure he didn't already have HIV and HEPC.  Dave started some anti-retro-viral medication which has potent side effects and came home to tell me what had happened.  Dave admitted that he would have rather not caused me to worry and not even tell me what had happened, but since we was concerned that the meds would make him really sick and we had to take precautions so that I wouldn't get it, he had no choice in the matter. So like a good wife, I worried sick about this for the last 6 weeks.  The medication was a 4 week course and made dave feel tired and lethargic and achy, but not nauseus or really sick like some. That was nice.  This week Dave was able to have his bloodwork done and found out that he does not have HIV. What a relief! The chance of him contracting the disease under the circumstances was very remote but it is still a worry.
Only 19 more months of Dave operating on adults and then he will be a pediatric surgeon and will only operate on children.  There are lots of reasons that this is wondeful and one of them is certianly that he won't have to operate on "dirty" patients.