I thought my studies would kill me today, literally

I've always thought how doing chemistry for study and work might affect my health or lifespan and today I got to experience a real scare because of a really stupid mistake I did out of lapse of judgement.

I was working on a synthesis and had to use nitrogen gas to shield the reagents in a flask bottle.

Well, I'm done with the nitrogen gas and go in to take a sample for my TLC plate.

This nitrogen gas was being fed through a real sharp, really long, injection needle attached to a balloon. The flask had a plastic septum on it which the needle pierced.

I went to pull out the needle and it was tight, so when I finally pulled it out it slightly recoiled and the needle jabbed me right into my hand.

Obviously, I put the needle down and run to the sink to rinse my hands. While this is happening I'm mentally going through all the possible side products and reagents that could have been in that needle.

Thankfully though, the needle never touched anything inside the bottle and I wasn't working with anything with serious toxicity. So I ended up being fine.

But I'm certainly never doing that again.

Feel free to lecture me or send death threats because I'm an idiot.

This is just a cautionary tale for anyone else that might do something stupid like I did.