Stabbed By A Baby Goth
If I’m any judge of youth fashion (hint: I’m totally not) the painfully young nurse who was responsible for taking my blood yesterday at the rural health clinic I attend might be a baby goth. Her hair was a blacker black than nature provides, her scrubs were a matching black, she wore big black eyeglasses, and close inspection (she had to get all up in my personal space to take my blood) revealed more empty piercing holes in her face than I could easily count.
I’m what’s known as a “hard stick” (my vein walls are springy and tend to roll away from the needle) and she was on her third try. I don’t care; my personal best (worst) is eight dry holes before a successful blood draw. But she has a kindly heart, and she does care. “I don’t want to hurt you!” she wailed, as she stabbed tentatively at the vein.
I felt bad for the young lady. She’s very kind and was being painfully nice. I wanted to put her at ease, but I am a big ol’ greying gruff white dude who, in the context she has encountered me, probably looks to her like just another MAGA asshole like her grandpa. There are barriers of propriety and professionalism between us, and we’ve got almost nothing in common. All I can do is be as calm and reassuring as possible. If only my too-smart mouth would get the memo…
“It’s all right,” I said as soothingly as I know how. “You know, some people even do this for fun.”
There was no hesitation in her response. She had indeed been aware. With considerable fervor: “Yes, but I’m not one of them!”
Luckily, at that moment her needle struck home. Blood for the blood labs!
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I have great, easy to jab, veins but once, when donating blood, a rookie phlebotomist stabbed me three times without success. I got “credit” for the donation but felt bad for the young woman. Hope she was able to succeed later.
Hah, I once had a trainee try five times on the back of my hand and twice on the inside of the wrist, before the experienced nurse just about no-scoped the needle in first go.
Fortunately the phlebotomists where I donate blood are really experienced and it’s like a mosquito bite. Plus they bring you malted milkshakes, heat packs, and there’s hot food after :)
I once had a young lady jab me for nearly fifty minutes before she called in the more experienced swordsman (…or swordswoman to be more specific).
I felt like I was the nurse’s community college homework assignment!
Most hospitals in my area have a rule that they MUST call in another jabber after 2 or three tries. But they rarely follow the regulation.
The next nurse must have been hired straight out of the local opium den. She tightly tied off my arm, smacked hard on the intended target, and hit a gusher on the very first try!
If you know ahead of time they’re gonna be wildcatting, drink PLENTY of water to puff out those veins.
Dehydration will cause unnecessary pain and anguish.
If need to, any phlebotomist worth his or her salt will heat up a small bag of water in a microwave oven and keep it pressed to their intended borehole area, in order to make
The targeted vein pop up.
Any decent hospital has invested in (infrared?), technology with which they can miraculously make the veins visible through the skin.
They’re just sadistic enough to be reluctant to allow the employment of this device, by claiming that their training won’t allow them to use it, out if fear of dependence on it.
Usually ejat this REALLY means is that the institution is too cheap to invest in more than one of these handheld devices, and the nurse is too plain lazy to go down or up a floor to retrieve it.
Also, they’re so impatient that they use a larger needle diameter to speed up its sucking speed, and oddly, the finer needles are MUCH more efficient at jabbing into a “rolly” vein.
Dr. Whiplash, I live in a very poor area of a red state near the bottom of most lists of … well, everything… and the clinic I go to does not have the infrared tech. The clinicians I deal with have seen it and trained with it during their education but do not have access to it here. It is not in the building.
Because this area is so deprived of good facilities, the local voc-tech college actually does send its nursing students to the clinic where I go to shadow the nurses, which means I do occasionally get terrified students asking permission (following a carefully trained/rehearsed student-disclosure script) to try and draw my blood. I always say yes and they always fail and I always invite them to try again and they always chicken out. I figure it’s the least I can do to try and help heal the skills and education deficits we have around here.
I am usually careful to drink 36-64 ounces of fluid before my lab appointments. Most often the trouble is not finding my veins, it’s that I follow a mostly whole foods plant based diet for cardiac health, one consequence of which is increased nitrous oxide in the body that makes my vein walls very elastic. This is great for cardiac health, but it means that the veins tend to roll and bounce and do everything but sit in place and allow easy piercing by the blood needle.
Wow!
Well, the high nitrous oxide level should improve your sex life!
A worthy trade.
Perhaps you will share the foods list that appears most to cause the effect?
Sadly it’s the same boring advice that you can find anywhere on the internet. Leafy greens and cruciferous vegetables at the top of the list, but I don’t like them much nor eat as many as I should. Whole grains and legumes after that. I eat a lot of whole wheat noodles, brown rice, lentils, and frozen corn, peas, and green beans for their steam-in-bag convenience.