Chiropodist treated my feet and now I'm worried

[Generallyok]

Apologies if I am panicking but this afternoon a mobile chiropodist visited my mum and while he was at her house I called in. I told him i had a stubborn verruca. He said he would look at it for me and cut a bit of skin and made it bleed. It didn't hurt but he put some acid on top. At the end of the treatment he asked for some boiling water to pour on to his instruments as he had run out of sterilised instruments. I'm now fretting that his hygiene might not be upto scratch as surely pouring boiling water is not enough? Therefore I'm now paranoid that I have put myself at risk of picking something up- hepatitis, HIV etc. Am I unnecessarily worrying?

He was at the house treating your mum and you asked him to treat you too. He should have refused if he didn’t have enough clean instruments.

He was pouring boiling water over instruments for next visit. Should I speak to my GP? I’m such a worrier I conference he will think I’m causing a fuss

How do you know he's hcpc registered? It's not Hpc any more so if he's using that term he's out of date...

He cards states he is so found it on the HCPcC website and found his registration number. How worried should I be. I ididnt loose my virginity until I was 25 as I was terrified I would get HIV and now so anxious. I’m so careful in life, I can’t believe I have been so stupid.

Two things going on here

Yes he's lax. Yes he's not following best practice. Yes he needs reporting

The other issue is your out of control health anxiety. No, you haven't been given HIV, no I doubt your foot will drop off and no, I'm sure you won't have been given some blood borne virus

Get treatment for your HA and raise this with his governing body as a concern so they can deal with it. In the meantime try and relax

I 100% agree with Tans.

Thank you Tans. I think that is what i needed to hear. I have been battling for years and sometimes other stressful situations tip me over and I become so irrational. I don't really know what the answer is even when I am better its like the elephant in the room. I think my first step is to go to see my GP......

I really don’t think you have anything to worry about. I suffered terribly from health anxiety for years and it always centred around hiv and hep c. Lost count of the times I got myself tested over the craziest things. Now I always think back to what a sexual health nurse told me - that to get hiv from blood in the open air, I would have to be rolling around in a pool of freshly spilt blood with deep cuts all over my body. HIV is considered non-transferable once it leave the body. Hep c lives longer outside the body, but then there are great treatments for that now. Please don’t worry, but definitely see your doctor about your anxiety. I’m on medication now and it takes the edge off of my anxiety - it stops me overthinking everything - I can live a normal life now.