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Just call me bloody over-eager
Oct. 31st, 2003 11:38 pmOkay, so I helped set up for a blood drive today, no irony there, eh? And while doing so, I discovered that the parameters had changed so they could accept my blood even though I was in Nigeria just last summer. That got me (maybe) too excited, mainly because I remember wondering when I last gave (years ago, before Kenya) when I would ever get to donate blood again. (Yes, for some reason it's something I actually really enjoy.)
I should mention here that I have large veins, and nobody has ever had trouble hitting them, that's probably part of why I don't have any fear of needles, and therefore don't mind the whole process. And I've been an EMT, which also makes me feel relaxed around such stuff. Heck, this is the guy who watched them put 11 stitches into the bottom of his feet, because he thought it was neat!
But as I say, I've been around this stuff for years, and have seen people do it well and not so well. So I'm fighting through frustration to be charitable, and to say that the lady who tried to take my blood had probably just had a long day, and that all of us can make silly mistakes anyway. That said, a warning: the rest of this story is LJ-13.
Well, the problem was that she kept forgetting the order she needed to do things in, and probed all over my right arm thinking she hadn't hit the vein when she probably had but forgot to unclamp the line so the blood could flow out the line. When she gave up after what I would characterize as an agonizing interval, and then realized her mistake, I said I didn't mind her trying the other arm. However, I'm afraid her confidence was sort of shaken and instead of going for the usual one (which is not small), she went after the really humongo vein I happen to have inside my left elbow, which no one has ever tried to do on me before.
With good reason, as it turns out. After getting it in, she turned away for a second and it popped right back out from the pressure, and pretty soon there was blood everywhere. It's venous, not arterial, so no spurting, but lots nonetheless. Hey, what better for Halloween, right? She started grabbing handfuls of gauze and shouting for a cold pack but I suggested (in the interests of not alarming a room of 30 or so people) that she could go get the cold pack while I held down all the gauze. There's a certain lingo in medical stuff and I think she knew when I said I'd hold direct pressure for her she realized I could be trusted at least that far.
It was too bad, all in all. She felt bad because she'd screwed up, and I sympathized with her, ("That's all right, try not to feel bad," I said!... an indication of how bad she felt about it that I was comforting her...) and I felt bad because I'd really wanted to give blood and now both arms were shot for any more tries, and all the blood I was losing was not going into a container. Bummer. But I do think I was as kind as I could have been to her, and I just feel like oh well, better luck next time.
Well, I will "just" feel that way when the bruises don't hurt so much any more, and I can bend my arms without wincing.
I should mention here that I have large veins, and nobody has ever had trouble hitting them, that's probably part of why I don't have any fear of needles, and therefore don't mind the whole process. And I've been an EMT, which also makes me feel relaxed around such stuff. Heck, this is the guy who watched them put 11 stitches into the bottom of his feet, because he thought it was neat!
But as I say, I've been around this stuff for years, and have seen people do it well and not so well. So I'm fighting through frustration to be charitable, and to say that the lady who tried to take my blood had probably just had a long day, and that all of us can make silly mistakes anyway. That said, a warning: the rest of this story is LJ-13.
Well, the problem was that she kept forgetting the order she needed to do things in, and probed all over my right arm thinking she hadn't hit the vein when she probably had but forgot to unclamp the line so the blood could flow out the line. When she gave up after what I would characterize as an agonizing interval, and then realized her mistake, I said I didn't mind her trying the other arm. However, I'm afraid her confidence was sort of shaken and instead of going for the usual one (which is not small), she went after the really humongo vein I happen to have inside my left elbow, which no one has ever tried to do on me before.
With good reason, as it turns out. After getting it in, she turned away for a second and it popped right back out from the pressure, and pretty soon there was blood everywhere. It's venous, not arterial, so no spurting, but lots nonetheless. Hey, what better for Halloween, right? She started grabbing handfuls of gauze and shouting for a cold pack but I suggested (in the interests of not alarming a room of 30 or so people) that she could go get the cold pack while I held down all the gauze. There's a certain lingo in medical stuff and I think she knew when I said I'd hold direct pressure for her she realized I could be trusted at least that far.
It was too bad, all in all. She felt bad because she'd screwed up, and I sympathized with her, ("That's all right, try not to feel bad," I said!... an indication of how bad she felt about it that I was comforting her...) and I felt bad because I'd really wanted to give blood and now both arms were shot for any more tries, and all the blood I was losing was not going into a container. Bummer. But I do think I was as kind as I could have been to her, and I just feel like oh well, better luck next time.
Well, I will "just" feel that way when the bruises don't hurt so much any more, and I can bend my arms without wincing.
