I went through a fair bit of chemotherapy as a child, so I used to be fairly comfortable with needles. They only bothered me if I couldn’t watch them go in. But they still hurt, and it often amused me and at other times irritated me when doctors and nurses tried to convince me that it doesn’t hurt.
They’d say, “Oh, but it’s just a little mosquito bite.”
…which is bullshit, and they know it.
One day in high school a nurse came by to talk to the class about giving blood, bullshitting everybody about how painless it was, and I was feeling cranky that day. I tried to keep the irritation out of my voice, but I mentioned that I had been through many medical treatments in my life and that I noticed she hadn’t addressed the many things that can go wrong. Including:
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Sometimes, blood will appear in the tube, and they’ll think the needle’s in the vein, but it will have actually poked all the way through and when they attempt to draw on it, it will cause a bruise.
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They don’t always tap the vein right the first time, but they won’t extract the needle all the way. Instead they’ll keep the point under your skin and fish around with the needle until they hit it.
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You might have what looks like a juicy vein that actually comes to a dead end or something. I’ve got one on my left arm that bruises badly anytime someone puts a needle to it. But anybody looking at it would think it’s a great vein.
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They could use butterfly needles, which have grips that allow easy inserstion of the needle at the proper angle. But instead they’ll probably use straight needles which are clumsier.
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The tourniquets are designed to pinch, and they sometimes pinch sharply. Plus, they will put your arm to sleep sometimes, because sometime it takes a lot of poking around to get the needle in the right place.
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The alcohol they swab you with is unpleasant to smell, and some people find it nauseous.
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When removing the needle, they will hold the alcohol pad down on the needle hard enough that it will hurt and will tend to push the needle around inside your skin where it doesn’t need to be. This in addition to the fact that the alcohol burns. They do this so that there will be pressure on the vein as soon as the needle vacates, to prevent the vein from `blowing out.’ Actually, they could safely pull the needle out quickly and then put pressure on the wounded vein with a piece of sterile cotton gauze. But most of them were never told this, and they won’t take your word for it no matter how much chemotherapy you’ve had.
The nurse chastised me for trying to scare people away. I did feel kind of bad about it. Not only was it for a good cause, by I myself have recieved several transfusions. I tried to redeem myself.
I said, “Ma’am, I found all this out when I was eight years old, and I still wasn’t afraid of needles. If any of these high school seniors can’t be as brave as an eight year old boy, their blood’s probably pretty weak anyway.”
Let me just say that I usually don’t play macho games or talk smack. But I spoke in terms of a challenge, and I got applauded for it. People got excited, especially the young men. When the time came, we marched out to the gym and stood in line. At that point I hadn’t been stuck with a needle in years. It’s very different when you’re used to it. But I couldn’t remember the last time my stoicism had been tested, and my memories of the many needles had become cloudy and I found it difficult to steel myself against a pain that I could only vaguely imagine.
I started to panic, but I kept it in check. I remained natural, though I rolled up my sleeves and started poking hard at my viens with my fingernail, trying to remember the sensation and how cavalier I used to be about it.
When my turn came I sat down and the man started asking questions, filling out his paperwork. When I told him my medical history, he pulled the form off the clipboard and dropped it in the wastebasket. They couldn’t take my blood. “Next!”
