Failure, Then and Now

So, I went to the hospital yesterday for my monthly bloodletting. I filled out the questionnaire as usual and Bill the Phlebotomist took my vitals, as usual. It's been cold the last few days (relatively speaking, for around here) so I opted for both the heating pad and a blanket and hopped up onto the couch.

Normally, there's just a slight "pinch" associated with the needle insertion and maybe a couple seconds' "burn" from the alcohol used to sterilize the site. This time, although not terribly intense, the pinch and burn went deep and stayed. Nurse Karen, the regular, in-charge person, noticed me wincing and tried adjusting the needle which didn't help. She said, "Breathe in," which I did. I started chanting, "Breathe in, scream out," which got a laugh from both of them. It's much more amusing when you're the one standing up.

After a couple of minutes Nurse Karen said, "That's it. We're done here," and pulled the needle out.

• CSB: Many years ago, when I was in college, the Red Cross came by for a blood drive. They set up a dozen or so gurneys in the dining hall and had a pretty good turn out. When my turn came I lay on my table, and they poked my right arm, hanging the bag below gurney height, I suspect both for the gravity assist and to keep donors from seeing their blood draining out. This was back when I was still giving whole blood and the entire donation process should have only taken 15-20 minutes. (This was also long before HIV/AIDS and a whole bunch of other disqualifiers and the questionnaire was mostly height, weight, blood type and did-you-eat-recently.) After a half hour, though, I was starting to get bored and I noticed that several people who had come in after me were already up and enjoying their juice and cookies. After several more minutes, a Red Cross doctor wandered by and examined the receiving pouch which was only a quarter full. A couple of minutes later he returned, looked at it again and said, "Huh. Your vein has collapsed. It's not drawing." He then proceeded to pull the needle out of my right arm, walk the entire apparatus around to the other side of the gurney and stick it into my left arm. It was a different world back then. There was no question of him not making his quota for the day and I ended up the only student on campus with bandages on both arms.

Anyway, Nurse Karen apologized, said she'd inserted "too high," whatever that means, and that, in addition to any pain, this attempt just wasn't drawing properly anyway. Now, given my history, above, and since I know where that needle has been (I mean, it was sterile before the first attempt, right?) I'm perfectly O.K. with trying to find another spot but, nowadays, that's against the rules and Nurse Karen trashed the lot which included a massive amount of tubing since with platelets the blood has to be drawn, channeled, centrifuged, separated, redirected and returned.

They offered me cookies and a T-shirt but, really, I was only there for a half hour and only five minutes of that was on the couch.

We're going to try again on Tuesday.