Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast.

Today, I'm going to talk about blood draws. How are you with getting your blood drawn for a test or something, right? I have a long history with blood draws. It started when I was a kid with blood draws. It started when I was a kid and I went with my mom. She was getting her blood taken for some sort of test and I was a curious kid, right? So I decided to watch. I mean, I was with her and she went into the office and she had her arm out and they put the tourniquet on her upper arm and the nurse or the phlebotomist, rather started to put the needle in. But the way the office was set up, they left the door to that room ajar. Being a curious child, I thought I would watch. Well, what happened was that I watched the blood go into the tube and I didn't feel good and I had to actually lay down on one of the cots in the lab and so, oh gosh, talk about embarrassing. So after that, when it was my turn to get my blood drawn, I was kind of a big baby about it. I would tell the phlebotomist that I wasn't very good about it and they would let me lay down and I was fine, but I never looked. I never looked.

And also when I was in school, I remember specifically biology class in high school. I was in school. I remember specifically biology class in high school. We had a section where we were talking about the human body and the discussion just the discussion of blood made me feel woozy. It was very squeamish. What I would do is I would sit there and I would doodle. I would doodle in my notebook and I would draw pictures of trees or houses. Actually I worked on drawing a whole farm because it kept my mind occupied and it wasn't too complicated, but I was able to still listen. But I was distracting myself, right, I was distracting my brain. And then I didn't feel like fainting, because when you're in high school, if you fainted in class, that was really bad.

Then I went to college, and I had to take another biology class for my general education requirement my GE and so I went through the same thing. I was a little bit better, but it was pretty much the same deal. I had to distract myself from feeling faint and woozy, and I was still going in for my blood draws and still asking to lay down. So at some point in there, I met my future husband. We've really been through it. He is somebody that's really helped desensitize me to all this. Right, he's had wounds and he's had things happen to him. He had a burn on the back of his leg that I had to help dress, and that was really the beginning of kicking myself out of the squeamish department, if you will, but anyway, yeah, that'll kick you out real soon, but anyway, I managed to graduate at some point, to getting my blood drawn and sitting upright, not having to lay down. I still don't look at my arm or the tubes, right, but I don't feel faint. I'm fine Now.

The next thing that's happened, though, is that I guess I've developed shy veins, because when I go to get my blood drawn, they usually have a big problem with me for whatever reason, and I've been told a couple of different things and I've talked about this before. I think I talked about it with the hospital visit episode or talking about my surgery. I was told a couple of times by different nurses or phlebotomists that my veins roll and so that causes a problem. Once they put the needle in that the vein, I guess, rolls away. And then I've been told that that is a fallacy, that veins don't roll, that that's just an excuse that people use. But whatever you want to say, I'm still difficult to get blood out of. I've tried the trick of drinking a lot of water, but I'll say that that doesn't necessarily always solve the and, depending on where I've gone, I've had experienced phlebotomists work on me and usually, like nurse supervisors, they're able to take care of it right away. But less experienced I think this is what my take on it is less experienced phlebotomists, people, less experienced nurses, whatever are not.

In fact, I remember the first time that a phlebotomist suggested that they were going to take blood out of my hand and remember I'm already kind of skitterish about all this anyway and they had tried to get it out of my arm, unsuccessfully, and they said, okay, well, I'm going to use the butterfly needle on your hand and I was like, oh wait, what, wait, what? Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, what? Because you know, because your hand is pretty sensitive, the skin there is pretty sensitive, right, and sensitivity. Sensitivity means pain, it means pain, and pain is not good. It's not good and if you're already kind of nervous about it, this is not a good thing. But in the end the hand thing, the butterfly needle in the hand, was a lot easier. I have to admit it was a lot easier. Sometimes it hurts a little bit more, but it was a lot easier. I don't fear that. In general I don't like getting my blood taken, but heavy site, but I can live through it. So yeah, I know I can survive and that's important.

So recently I had to go and get a spot TB test tuberculosis TB test. Now I had one of these many years ago and it was a skin test, it wasn't a blood test and that's what I thought it was. This time I tried to call. I always try to call. If there's a different place that I'm going or something that I don't know, I try to call and get the information a different place that I'm going or something that I don't know. I try to call and get the information and make sure that I'm all set. I find that this is a time saver usually and it helps out in the process. I know what to expect, right, no surprises.

Well, I tried to call this one place where I was supposed to go and it turned out that I couldn't reach an actual human being. So I just went, and I went in the afternoon and I was told that I was supposed to be there in the morning because they had to get the sample done and processed, for it had to be picked up by one o'clock in the afternoon. So I was too late for that day, which was fine, because I didn't realize that it was going to be a blood draw and I was like uh-oh, but I was kind of set up in my mind to come back twice, because when you have the skin test, you go and then two days later you go again and they check the site, so okay. So I had a series of events that made it difficult to go back right away. We had massive plumbing problems here and I had to be here for the plumber and be here to manage the pets and everything, and so I finally went this past week and I got there in plenty of time and it was still a drive with traffic, but I got there.

I waited quite a long time but there was still time to get the test in and they called me in finally and put me in the lab and I kind of joked around with the gal and as we were walking back I said, well, I'm not easy to get blood from, but since you're experienced, I probably shouldn't have said anything. But I said you know, people that are less experienced aren't able to get blood out of me. I should never say anything like that Until I, until I know, I just let me just say I shouldn't say anything. Okay, so they put me in the chair because I had actually looked at my arms before going in and I realized that you couldn't see my veins at all. Okay, and the whole water, drinking water trick. I mean that's great, but when you have overactive bladder you have to be really careful about how much you drink and when you're going to drink it. So it's kind of a delicate balance, right.

So she looked at my arms and she started pressing and you know how they do they kind of tap right on the inside of your elbows. And then three more people came in, three more women, lovely women, because this was a training environment, this was going to be a training opportunity, and I thought, oh no, this isn't going to go well. But I was trying to be positive, right, okay. But you know, just sitting there just hoping, okay, all the while my veins are disappearing into my arm. Okay, so she gets the needle, she says she's going to go for it. She says there's a vein, she can see it. I had warned her that my veins roll. And so she sticks the needle in. It didn't hurt a lot. And then she starts moving it around. Okay, I don't know if you've ever had somebody do that to you, but it's like they're digging around in your arm with a needle. This is not the most pleasant experience in the world.

She puts the vial on and she's trying to get the blood to come out, and there's kind of a pause you know she's not asking me to make a fist and she's not taking the tourniquet off and I said is it working? And she said, no, it's not working. So there's no blood coming out, there's no blood. Maybe there's no blood in my body, I don't know. And so she keeps trying, she's digging a little bit more. And then she says okay, and then she takes off the tourniquet and I look and the vial is empty and she had taken the needle out and I was like, oh no, okay. So then she starts looking again and again at the other arm and that arm and I said, well, you know, people have taken it out of my hand successfully. And she says, well, that's painful. Well, like digging in my arm with a needle isn't painful.

So at this point I you know, I admit I had had a bad day. I was having an emotional day. I had been thinking about Dallas, my horse. I've been missing him. I really didn't want to be there, I didn't want to have an audience, and I started crying and maybe that was a bad thing, maybe that was a good thing, because they all disappeared. I apologized, they all disappeared, I apologized, they all disappeared.

And then they called in the supervisor and the supervisor was able to get the blood on the first try. Unfortunately, she put the needle in almost the same spot as the first needle. So if you look at my arm on that side, you will see that it looks like I was in a fight or something. I still. It's four days later and I still have a bruise that looks like someone ran over my arm, but irregardless.

So she took two tubes, two huge tubes. I mean it's a TB test but whatever. But she took two tubes because she said that the first tube didn't quite fill up. I'm talking maybe a quarter inch fill up. I'm talking maybe a quarter inch. She filled up a second tube. She said she wanted to be sure because I guess they didn't want me to come back.

They didn't want to have to see my face again. I don't blame them, I really didn't want to see their face again. And I asked this was Wednesday morning. I asked how long it would take to get results and they said 72 hours and it's now 96 hours and we haven't gotten the results. But they did go through. They did send the blood through Quest because I saw the Quest box on the door. So I have a Quest login for all my other tests and I went and saw the results there. So I am negative. So it was just an insult to injury to not send the results earlier.

When they got them, which was I looked, it was two days later. So they did get the results on Friday. It looks like they got the, which was. I looked it was two days later. So they did get the results on Friday. It looks like they got the results Friday morning, but they did not send them over. Thank you, so that's my blood draw story for the week.

I don't know. I don't know if everybody has this trouble. I know my husband doesn't have this trouble. Well, sometimes they do have trouble getting blood out of him, but he's on blood thinners so he bleeds like a stuck pig anytime. That's kind of a weird saying, isn't it? Yeah, stuck pig Anyway. So that's it. Now I'm going to go and, well, just luxuriate in the air conditioning. It's really hot here. We're experiencing our first heat wave and next week I'm going to have something else to share with you. I know we'll another topic together. I hope you'll join me. Another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode. Please follow the Only Child Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on and consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page, only Child Diaries or Facebook. Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace and these are the Only Child Diaries.