My veins are winning the race for most exasperating body part. They passed up my turkey gobbler and my cowlick and are closing in fast on my uterus, which has basically broken free of its restraints and is bothering its neighbors, namely my bladder.
My veins are determined to make me feel every second of my age. In fact, they’ve banded together in a circulatory-systemwide terrorist cell and they won’t stop until I’m either dead or shunned because of ugliness and botched phlebotomy.
I had to have a colonoscopy recently – OK, I realize that so far this post is gross and TMI-disgusting. Sorry – The procedure was routine, but it’s only been six years since my last one, so it does make me wonder what my doctor was thinking in insisting that I get one this year. Six years is just long enough to have forgotten the specifics of how horrible the day-before-your-colonoscopy is. All that lingers is a general aura of I didn’t like that very much. It hangs out in your memory bank along with grocery shopping in the rain, natural childbirth, and participating in bowl-a-thons. You can’t place exactly why you are avoiding going through it again, but you just do. That vague feeling isn’t strong enough to bolster your argument with your doctor that you don’t need another one. So while you’re sitting there going I don’t know . . . Really? Are you sure I should get that? Again? Really? I don’t know, your doctor is saying Oh come on, it’s easy. You just drink the stuff, you go in, you’re in and out and then you’re good for another few years.
Except there is no in and out for me, because of my troubled veins. Even though I have these huge, honkin’ veins on my hands, when it comes time to take a needle, they go into hiding. My veins are so big and bulgy, if I’m stuck without an iPad in a waiting room, I can entertain myself and others by pointing my hands down and watching the veins pop out, then point them up and watch the disgustingness disappear before my very eyes. It looks like interpretive dance. Who says parlor games are out of fashion?
Yet when I have to have an IV or get blood drawn I get a lot of this:
Tsk. Hmmm. Can’t seem to . . . find a . . . vein . . .
The blood lady will then start thumping my arm, sometimes flicking it with her finger, which is the third-grade solution when they run out of authorized methods. Supervisors are called in, other patients are put through ahead of me, sometimes I’m told to drink a bunch of water and make a series of tight fists with rubber hosing wrapped around my upper arm until I’m blue in the face.
One time I suggested they use my inner thigh.
“I watch a lot of Law and Order? And the junkies are always shooting up at the top of their inner thigh, because they’ve ruined all of their other, well-placed and easily accessible veins. Instead of dicking around with my arms for another hour, why don’t we take a tip from the experienced crack whores on a great crime TV show and try something more creative?”
The blood nurses don’t like to move away from the arms. This latest time, while trying to insert the IV before my colonoscopy, they did eventually move to the back of my hands, but with little improvement. First blood nurse Number One tried my forearm and had to push the needle with so much force, it slipped and the bottom edge of the needle-thingy crashed into my arm, nicking the skin.
Tsk. OK. That didn’t work. Let’s try something else.
Yeah. Let’s.
She called in blood nurse Number Two, who tried a vein in the back of my right hand.
Tsk. Oops. Blew the vein.
She moved to my left hand and struck gold there. Afterward, among all the signs of battery, that area had the biggest, baddest bruise, worse than the blown vein (which sounds so much more violent than it actually is). At Thanksgiving, I looked like the nursing home patient who no one comes to visit and whose chart says Bruises Easily and Lost Cause.
It’s gotten so bad that when I do have to have an IV or get blood drawn, I ask right away if they have someone older than 40 who has been doing bloodwork for more than a few years. If there are any nurses in training, don’t even. Let them practice on someone else. For me, I want someone with some initials after his or her name, or – hey – are there any heroin users in the house?
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If you liked this, you may like:
If It’s Not October, Why Am I at the Doctor? - That one time when I had to go to the doctor for a real medical reason.
A Run-In With the Doctor – That one time when I realized the doctor who performed my colonoscopy was one of the dads from my son’s soccer team who I had to see twice a week for a whole season. {{Awkward}}
A Health Conscious Female Looks at 50 – That one time when I turned 50. Yeah.
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Read more of Diane’s Just Humor Me columns here. Sign up for our weekly e-newsletter to get new blog post notifications. And if you like her blog, you’ll love her book, Home Sweet Homes: How Bundt Cakes, Bubble Wrap, and My Accent Helped Me Survive Nine Moves.
