March 18th, 2013
Bloodwork--the chilling word that gets me thinking about needles stabbing me, pain, and lots of blood coming out of my arm. I haven't actually had many bad experiences with bloodwork, though. Up until my last two visits, I was still considered a kid (hurray!), and they used butterfly needles instead of the real ones on me. These needles are really tiny, don't hurt that much going in, and have "wings" to cancel out any movement or jerking around of the needle.
However, during my last last visit, I went to a different facility to get my blood taken. They decided to use an adult needle on me. The person who took my blood also looked really young--almost like they hadn't graduated college yet. Anyways, she was really bad at it. Right when the needle went in, it started hurting like crazy. And, she decided to wiggle the needle around while she was at it. After 15 seconds of that, she decided she couldn't find any blood (seriously?? Even I can see my blood vein, it's pretty prominent after being stabbed at a couple hundred times). She decided to try again (yay...no.) and drew the needle out. It felt like someone was stabbing me repeatedly in the arm with a knife instead of just a needle...When she FINALLY got enough blood, my arm was throbbing.
sdlfkjdsj looks so scary :'(
So, today, when the guy doing my bloodwork asked me, "You're a pro at this now, right? You've done this a bunch of times." I answered, "Hm. Not really." It turns out he was pretty good at drawing blood, and it basically didn't hurt at all.
See, when I was a kid I wanted to donate my blood. You know, for leukemia patients, or for people with blood deficiencies, etc. etc. But, after hearing about how others almost fainted after donating too much blood, or thinking about reliving the experience with the amateur blood taker except for much longer, I decided to not donate my blood, at least not yet. I feel terrible, but I just can't stand making my arm a dartboard again.
Oh god........I absolutely hate blood work. So last year when I got mine done, there was a person one thing down (and it's separated by flimsy curtains, so it's not like you can't hear/see shadows and everything) and she was a couple years older than me and absolutely FLIPPING OUT over getting her blood drawn. Like she was hyperventilating and talking about how it's going to hurt, how she hates needles, and how she's going to die. Basically, I was sitting one thing down waiting for my turn and let's just say those screams definitely scared me. A lot. I still hate blood work. And my birthday is coming up next month, which means it's time for blood work again. T^T
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this, I felt really, really lucky. I haven't had to get blood works since I was a little kid (like when I was in kindergarten). Since then the worst I ever got was the typical flu shots and various other random immunity shots that are required. However, now that I think about it, I think I recalled my doctor telling me way back when I was a little kid that I would need to get a blood test when I was 14/15... Hopefully I'll get lucky and get a painless (or as painless as blood works can be) experience, if/when I'm getting one.
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