Of course this has been asked a billion times, but bear with me while I ask again.
I was checking my blood sugar and I smudged up some fresh blood, still glistening, on my meter. A memory came to me from years and years ago, when I first started checking. I asked my boss if I could borrow his meter, and he protested very strongly, which I remember being weird. But he let me use it.
A few years later, he died of AIDS. It occurred to me that possible that was the reason, although I don’t think anyone knew of it or its vector at the time, but I’m hazy as to the years. I’m sure if they did, and he did, for sure he would never have let me use it.
(Actually, to this day I don’t know if people lend or borrow meters, for any reason. It’s never come up.)
Remember, I used/handled it as I pricked my finger.
If my blood supply, although locally pumping out, touched it have been possible to contract HIV? (Assuming for the sake of argument he was infected then.)
1a) Is the “locally pumping out” idea baloney across the board for the capillary passage of blood, ie that there is no molecular ingress? I think so, based on my experience with infections, all the more so with diabetics with lousy capillaries.
If his (for the sake of argument) then-infected blood was “wet” or “dry?”
2a) For how long?
Huh? I’m well versed in the use of blood glucose meters and there is only one way I could imagine person to person HIV transmission occurring by sharing a lancet with multiple people(dangerous and stupid obviously).
The testing strips are one use only, they literally won’t work twice so how could contamination happen that way?
The risk of transmission from a needlestick injury with a needle contaminated with HIV infected material is 0.3% (3 in 1000). The risk of transmission of via touching a meter with HIV infected blood on it (and presumably in small enough quantities as not to be obviously blood-smeared) must surely be lower than that 0.3%. I don’t think capillary blood is really pumping out and most advice these days is not to try to “milk” needlestick wounds as it’s not effective so I don’t think that aspect is likely to be important.
In addition, HIV can only live for a few hours outside the body, so he would have had to have smeared blood on the meter within that few hours - for this reason I think wet blood would have a higher risk of still containing some live HIV.
Overall it seems very unlikely but not completely impossible.
You don’t mention exact dates but i get the impression this was a significant (years and years => 10 years) time ago. If you had been infected you’d surely know it by now.