It would be easier to get a blood sample from a submerged rabid elephant seal than me.
My veins roll and blow. They tease by looking really promising, and then move away from the needle.
Yesterday, my doctor needed a blood sample. Two nurses tried. Then the doc himself. They used hot packs, then the blood pressure cuff. After nine pokes :eek: , they finally struck hemogloblin. phew
Please, share you’re phlebotomy-hell stories. 
My mother has nice, cooperative veins. Everyone said so.
Until she started having chemotherapy. Her veins went into hiding.
That’s been a few years. I don’t know whether they’ve come back or not.
My veins play hide-and-seek whenever a needle nears them. Nurses rub my arms, pat them and try to coax a vein to come out of hiding to no avail.
When they are found, it always hurts like hell when I have blood drawn. I usually have a massive bruise in the area.
Yep, I am a “hard stick”. Partly because I’m fat and partly because I don’t drink much and partly because they’re shy.
Chemo is hell on veins. They shrink, and they get tougher, so it’s easier to miss one when you go in with a needle. In my phlebotomy (blood drawing) rotation, I felt horrible when I had to do the oncology ward, because it was almost impossible to get blood from anyone. Luckily everyone I had to poke that day was very nice about it. They’re used to it, I guess, considering how much blood they need drawn.
A note for those of you who bruise easy - you know you’re not supposed to fold your arm up, right? Keep it straight, put some pressure on the gauze for about 2 minutes, and then you’re done. Folding the arm up tends to squeeze blood from the little hole in the vein, and it pools around, making the bruise.
My veins are good, but they’re deep. I have a couple of surface ones that look like they’d be good to use, but they’re too thin. Unfortunately, phlebotomists who don’t know better, and who navigate by sight instead of touch like they’re supposed to, always aim for the blue line at the surface instead of the juicy one underneath. Resulting in much ouching.
I have shy veins. They hide under normal circumstances, and when there is a needle present, they are particularly hard to locate.
I tell any phlebotomist that comes near my arm that s/he will need to use a butterfly thingie. They always smile as if to say, “Well, others may have needed to do so, but I am spectacular at my job.” Then they look at my arm, and rummage around in their stuff for one of the butterfly thingies.
The worst, ever, was a few years ago when I had a terrible virus of some sort and was throwing up things I had eaten in 1977, or so it seemed. I had to go to the emergency room, and I was terribly nauseated, had horrendous diarrhea, and was apparently really dehydrated. On top of having terrible veins to start with. The nurse that was trying to hook me up to an IV was hating life, as was I.
I don’t know what he was doing, exactly, but it felt like he had taken a large piece of rebar and was jerking it around in my arm, trying to locate a vein. Absolutely terrible. I bawled like a small child. Later, when I was lucid, I felt bad that my poor mom had had to witness the scene. She ended up crying too, from sympathy. shudder
I tell medical staff the same thing, get the same response and it always ends up the way your describe. Many a phlebotomist’s ego has been taken down a notch by my Stealth Micro Veins ™ 
At least they only look at your arm before reaching for the butterfly.
I’m a terrible stick too. And its in my notes that the easiest, nay only way to get blood out of me is to use a butterfly. Every single phlebotomist ignores this.
The latest one was when one of them looked at my left arm, and was told in no uncertain terms to use a butterfly. However, she decides to try and find a vein. I have very very thin veins close to the surface of my body, and thicker veins lie much deeper. So I tell her again that the best way to get blood out of me, and the only consistent way that it has worked in the past is to use a butterfly needle on either the back of my hand, or the side of my wrist. She says that she’s not going to do that, but she’s sure she can find a vein in my arm. She looks at my left arm, and realises that there’s no suitable vein there, so goes to my right one, and finds a not so thin vein fairly deep down, and decides to go for that. She jabs the needle in. I wince in pain. Some blood starts to trickle into the tube. Then the pain starts. She wiggles the needle a bit to get more blood coming through, and the pain starts radiating down my arm. I go pale, and she removes the needle.
So, she goes to get nurse #2 to do the butterfly, like I asked her to in the first place. Nurse #2 comes in and thinks she knows better than nurse #1. Nurse #2 jabs needle into left arm, into the vein that nurse #1 rejected on the grounds that it was too thin. Nurse #2 gets no blood out of me there, and leaves my left arm in considerable pain too. She then, finally, does the butterfly into the back of my left hand. Success first time round, and 10 minutes later, I’m out of there, having given them the necessary blood.
I had bruises running down the length of my arms, and my right arm was radiating pain from the elbow to the little and ring fingers. Great.
I have terrible, deep veins. I have also been blessed with thyroid disorder, which means I have to have my blood tested sometimes as often as once a month.
I have found that it helps to drink a lot of water before you go in. It helps to puff the veins up a little. It also helps to be warm. When I go in the winter I have to blast the heat the whole way there. If I walk in and I’m so cold my skin looks purple, we’re going to have problems.
I was recently diagonsed with hypothyroidism. My heart goes out to you.
Drinking a lot of water is what I typically do before a draw. I’ll have to try staying warm next time.
I have terrible veins. About four years ago, one very talented phlebotomist (one who actually was as good as most of them seem to think they are) found one good vein, deep in the bend of my right arm. Every time I go to have blood drawn, I point to it, and say “that’s where you’re going to strike gold”. If they listen, and go for it, it’s good.
The real problem comes when I need an IV. No one wants to put an IV in the bend of my right arm. One time I was actually late for a surgery, because no one could get my IV started. I had an anesthesiologist on my left, and another on my right, both poking, prodding, and sweating! One of them kept saying “You have veins like a baby! Just like a baby!” like it’s my fault or something. :dubious: They finally ended up putting the IV in my foot. That was fine until the day after surgery when they let me out of bed. As soon as I started walking, the IV blew.
My husband, OTOH, who has never needed an IV in his life, has perfect veins. I could start an IV in him. From across the room.
I have to get my blood taken regularly, and I’m not an easy stick. The lab techs know me by now, and we have a set routine. The tech will put the tourniquet on quite a bit tighter than she would someone else, and she’ll pin the vein down VERY well before trying for the stick. The tourniquet is painful, but it’s not as bad as being stuck, and stuck, and stuck, and then having the tech tie it tighter. I’d rather just get it over with.
If I have a new tech trying to draw blood from me, I tell her that my good veins are deep and shy, and she’ll need to tie that elastic TIGHT. I say that others have found that my veins like to roll, so she might want to pin down the vein well before sticking. I also warn her about which veins are prone to collapsing. The techs don’t like sticking a vein that’s likely to collapse, it just makes their job harder.
Try to be hydrated when you’re going in for some bloodwork, as yellowval said. I also find it helpful to flex my arms vigorously to increase the circulation a bit. It might just be in my head, giving me something to focus on rather than dwell on the upcoming stick.
I look away before the stick, and hold my breath as the needle goes in. The lack of movement seems to help the tech. Afterwards, if the stick was painless or nearly painless, I make sure to tell the tech, and thank her for doing a good job. Most of them really don’t want to cause pain, you know, they want to help.
Which of course isn’t the easiest thing in the world when you’re hypothyroid, is it? I’m usually freezing my buns off, even in the middle of summer. Sorry to hear about your diagnosis. It isn’t the worst thing a person could have, but it’s certainly not the best either.
Yep, constantly cold. Living in Colorado, it can get tough. brrrrrrrr. We’re still trying to get the right does of synthroid, so many more bleeds in the future.
Sometimes when the nurses can’t get a vein for a stick, they’ll call me to try for an artery.
Using the pulse as a guide, I am usually successful, but I too, have problems getting a stick if a patient has a weak or thready pulse.
Quasi
Hijack; they just told me I had hypothyroid too, but the numbers didn’t seem too bad (.79 on the one they want to be min .90). I started taking the synthroid because maybe it would help with energy but I don’t feel like I have most of the symptoms they list. Oh well, worth a try. I’m supposed to get retested in six weeks.
Hijack continues: Make sure they’re testing all of your thyroid hormones and thyroid antibody levels, not just your TSH. Mine didn’t show up that bad on my first test either, but after they tested everything they diagnosed me as hypothyroid. At first they put me on a very, very low dosage but following the second test bumped me up to .125, if I remember correctly, following the second test. That was about 11 years ago and I’ve been on the meds ever since.
Drawing blood from my arm isn’t so bad, they usually get it on the second try. I’ve learned to “present” the part of my arm that is easiest. But IVs are horrible - the last time I had one put in my hand, there was a little pool of blood on the floor because they couldn’t get it right. Fun.
Hmm. They did whatever the most common one was (I guess TSH), and then the Free T4 thingie. I’ve never been high-energy and I’ve usually been fat so I didn’t really notice there was a problem. I was pretty resistant to more meds, even when she told me cardiac issues might result, because it seems like that could take years. But as I said, I’ll give it a try.
I’ve had to listen to all sorts of nurses & phlebotomists say, “You have the tiniest veins I’ve ever seen!” For some reason, I found this especially depressing at the plasma donation center.
On the plus side, now that I’m ineligible to donate (infinitesimal possibility of exposure to mad cow disease) I am spared having to choose between feeling guilty for failing to donate blood products versus the one and a half to two hours it used to take to do so.