I didn't mean to do it.
It loved me in my head.
I tried to be a charmer,
but got a bit hopeless instead.
The world is very sexy.
It's part of my collapse.

They make such amusing facial expressions when they screw up.

Five times I've had my classmates attempt to draw blood from me and only two have been successful, but no one phleboto-failed like the spazz that tried to draw my blood yesterday.

Now I'm sure she's a perfectly nice person but it makes me a bit uneasy that she's entering the medical field. One thing I noticed right away is that she tied the tourniquet waaaaay to close to the puncture sight. About a inch from it, possibly less.

In retrospect I really should've said something but I'm still doing (boring) front office work. Next block is when my class gets to start poking eachother (yay!) so for the moment I decided to just let her do her job. She'd done this before so I figured she'd know what she was doing.


SPOILER WARNING
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She didn't.
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END SPOILERS

Now my right arm has a really nice vein in it. Pops right out. Doesn't hurt that I keep myself well hydrated. Other than that I don't really bleed much when the needle is removed so spazz-muh-tazz decided to use a circle bandage instead of a regular one.

So she gloves up, disinfects, all that jazz and goes in with the needle. She got the vein at a weird angle so to rectify that she pulled out a little to re-anchor the needle. Well, a little turned out to be all the way and out the needle slipped . . . . with a generous amount of my blood.

Now, as I said above, funny thing about medical students is the look of absolute unbridled horror on their faces when they screw up. Though I suppose when faced with a steady stream of blood pouring down your "patient's" arm it can't really be helped.

Bare in mind that she had the tourniquet tied an inch or less from the puncture sight.

"Shit!"

Yes, that was a pretty good way to describe the situation, especially as she flailed and completely forgot to untie said tourniquet until the teacher came over and told her to do so. In all honesty, it looked worse that it actually was and I found it amusing that I wasn't the least bit alarmed while she looked as though she killed someone.

At one point I was asked if I was "okay" with seeing my own blood and if I was going to faint. Well, if I fainted at the sight of blood then I think it's fair to say I made a very poor career choice.

Even after that I was feeling generous enough to sign my initials on spazz's chart to note that she had a "successful" blood draw. To be fair she did get some of it in the tube so I suppose the fact that she got it everywhere else is of little concern.

I even went back today to have another student draw my blood. Now she was one of the two that actually drew my blood without mishap and I got a cookie for my effort so yay to that. But if anything, I took away a valuable lesson from this experience.

If your red-haired, hyperactive phlebotomist/MA ties off too closely to where she's gonna poke you, politely decline to continue with the procedure and flee. Flee far. Flee fast.

Unless you like bleeding all over your arm or the table. Then totally go for it.



On an unrelated note, this music video is great. Awesome even. Super awesome.

[link]

What the hell man? Seriously.