# Questions about eating before surgery (the patient, not the doctor) **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 26, 2005, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-eating-before-surgery-the-patient-not-the-doctor/323567 "2005-09-26T22:43:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2005, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-eating-before-surgery-the-patient-not-the-doctor/323567/21 "2005-09-27T22:53:09Z")
> [@whiterabbit](#): > > I have been blessed with good veins. This makes people who are looking to stick sharp things in them very happy. It also makes me happy since it’s really hard to screw up, say, a blood draw on me (it’s only happened like twice in my life, once when I was little and uncooperative, and the other time by some tech in a hospital at 5:30 AM and even then I don’t know how she messed up but it hurt a lot and I had an enormous bruise afterwards). Fortunately, I have one good vein for drawing blood; unfortunately, it’s right in the bend of my right arm, so is an inappropriate place for an IV. Also unfortunately, when I go into the ER with a kidney stone attack (this happens more than I’d like to think about), the ER doc always says something like “Let’s get an IV started on you, and then we can give you meds for pain and nausea” so I tell him I have impossible veins, it can take hours to get an IV started, and if he’ll give me the first dose intra-muscularly, then they can poke and prod and start an IV. Then he’ll always say something like “Oh, these nurses can start an IV on _anybody_” Three or four hours and a half-dozen needle sticks later, if I’m lucky, he’ll okay the meds to be given intra-muscularly. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/questions-about-eating-before-surgery-the-patient-not-the-doctor/323567.md?page=1)