Blood Test

I am a regular blood donor, I first gave blood in October 1995, and over the past sixteen years I have given just over thirty donations. I’ve seen a few changes to the donor process in that time, and I have been needled by veteran and novice arm jabbers alike. I have even, on at least one occasion, been the very first arm that a newbie has been let loose on. Yet in all that time, and all those donations, no matter who has administered to me, or their level of experience, I have never had a single problem. I’ve never had any bruising, bleeding, or dizziness, and I’ve never felt any residual pain. The reason for this may be because I have, as I’m told on almost every occasion, “very good veins” or, as they’re apparently known to the donor carers, “superhighways”. Basically my veins stick out... a lot, they are very prominent, very easy to find, and very easy to stick a needle in. So for me giving blood is such an easy business that I’ve forgotten about having a needle stuck in my arm by the time I’m at the refreshment table stuffing my face with tea, biscuits and crisps... mainly crisps actually, I do prefer my snacks to be savoury.

This morning though I had to see the practice nurse at my GP so she could take a small blood test that my doctor has requested. After the obligatory overly long wait in the waiting room, which I suppose they have to get their money’s worth from; they’ve paid for a waiting room and, by the waiting room gods, people are going to wait in it, I was called into the nurse’s office. I entered her office, we exchanged traditional morning greetings, I didn’t mention that she appeared to have a large chunk of lawn stuck to the heal of her shoe, I sat down, she said something about not knowing what the doctor’s comment on my notes meant and promptly left the room for five minutes. Apparently my wait in the waiting room had not been long enough so I was treated to a little extra impromptu wait, but of course I wasn’t in the waiting room so would it count towards their waiting room wait quota for the day? I can only surmise that the nurse herself went and stood in the waiting room for those five minutes to act as a proxy waiter.

With the waiting all done, and the waiting room gods satisfied, the nurse re-entered the room, assembled all the blood testing paraphernalia and said ‘ok, let’s try and find a vein’. I offered out my arm. ‘Very good veins’ she said. ‘So I’ve been told’ I replied. She jabbed the needle in and pushed down on the blood collection tube which immediately began to fill with my blood. Within seconds we were done, no problems whatsoever. She removed the blood collection tube and grabbed a ball of cotton wool. I know from my blood donor sessions that the next step is that she places the cotton wool ball over the entry point of the needle, removes the needle from my arm, and I firmly press the cotton wool down on my arm to stop any bleeding. All well and good, only, before removing the needle, and for reasons only known to herself, the nurse decided to sharply jab it further in causing a sudden jolt of pain to shoot right up my arm to my shoulder. I left that surgery in a lot of pain, and completely unable to bend my arm for about half an hour. Even now, twelve hours later, I still have quite a bit of pain in my arm, and for the first time in more than thirty incidents of having blood taken from my arm I have been left with a bruise.

The next time my doctor wants a blood test from me he’ll have to wait until my next blood donor session and I’ll ask them to take an extra sample for him. That vicious little, lawn stomping nurse is never getting a needle near my arm again.