Looked like an idiot in front of the client

I'm very glad I don't work in a human health care field because I stick myself with needles all the time. When I do it in front of a clients, I usually smile and tell them that I'm well vaccinated while I hide the resulting blood.

I also have a very bad habit of removing syringe caps with my teeth. One day this habit caught up to me.

I was preparing to draw blood from a large dog and my wonderful technician took the syringe cap off for me. You know, trying to be helpful because I didn't have a spare hand to remove it myself. Well, I didn't realize the needle was uncapped and by force of habit, I started to stick it in my mouth. And I stabbed myself in the lip. For those of you that have never stabbed yourself in the lip with a 22g needle, lips punctures bleed profusely. 

Halfway thru drawing the blood, I felt blood running down to drip off my chin.  I tilted my head down and tried to subtly wipe my chin with the back of my hand. As I'm transferring the blood to a shipping tube the dog's owner saw the blood on my hand and started freaking out that her dog was bleeding.

 At that point I had to confess that it was from my lip, not her dog. Talk about looking like an idiot in front of the client. It took 30 minutes to get my damn lip to stop bleeding.