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“They treated me like I had leprosy,” said Monica Higgins, who says she was turned away from an Appletree clinic at Bank Street and Heron Road Thursday morning, which, coincidentally, was World Hepatitis Day.
Higgins booked an allergy test at the Appletree clinic several weeks ago after she started experiencing allergy symptoms for the first time.
She said the nurse began preparing Higgins for the test, which involves rubbing serums of 52 possible allergens on her arm, then pricking the skin to watch for a reaction.
“She started asking me questions: Have you ever had this? Have you ever had that? And then she asked, have you ever had any blood-borne diseases?
“I said yes — I wasn’t going to lie. I said, ‘Yes, I had hep C but I’ve been hep C free for a little over four years now.”
Higgins said the nurse promptly left and a few minutes later a doctor came in and asked the same question.
“I said ‘Yes, I had it’ — ‘had’ being the operative word. He said, ‘Well, I’m sorry but we can’t give you the test.’ I asked why and he said it was too much of a risk.”
Higgins said the doctor told her the clinic had no proof she was free of the virus. She wonders why they just didn’t wear gloves, if they were concerned about infection.
“It’s not like they were going to hit a vein and blood would go spurting everywhere. It’s just a little prick on the skin. I don’t even think you bleed,” she said. “I’ve been so proud. I’ve been so proud of being hep C free and for a doctor to shame me like that because of something I had, it just blows my mind.”
The chairman of the Canadian Liver Foundation, Dr. Morris Sherman, said any concerns the clinic had were unfounded.