Tuesday I got sent to the hospital for monitoring for pre-eclampsia. My blood pressure is out of control and I'm throwing ridiculous amounts of protein. My OB tells me to expect to leave the hospital with a baby.
I warned my nurse that I'm a hard stick and to tell the lab to send their *very best* person. So the guy comes up and says "I hear you think you're a hard stick".
I tell him that I am chronically dehydrated due to Hyperemesis, that my veins are child sized and that they roll. So yes, I tend to be a hard stick. I also ask him to please use a pediatric needle as I've had far less trouble blowing through the veins with pediatric needles.
It was at this point he spied my PICC line and said he wanted to draw out of that. I told him I'd love for him to be able to draw from the PICC line but that the catheter is too small to get blood return. We've tried, repeatedly. He spends the next 10 minutes trying to get blood from the PICC. Then he decides that maybe I actually know what I'm doing since I've had the line for the last 6 months and finds a vein.
The minute he put the needle in I knew it wasn't good. I ask if he used a pediatric needle and he said "Oh no, I didn't have any and didn't feel like going down to get one." I now have this *gigantic* BLACK bruise in my elbow with purple stripes running through it. I'm used to bruising after blood draws but damn! Bonus suck he put regular latex tape over the site, so I have a nice burn on either side of the bruise.
Thursday I get sent back to the hospital. Same reason. (Although I'm much calmer now as I feel like I've seen this show before...)
A very nice lady comes up and draws, listens to everything I say, doesn't try the PICC and uses a pediatric needle.
About 30 minutes later another lady comes up and says she's here to draw my blood. And I said "Oh, someone was already here, we're good." And she says "Oh no there was some sort of mistake. They lost your blood or something, I need to draw again." I spend another 5 minutes explaining that no she's not going to try to draw from the PICC and that yes I am a hard stick. But again she listens and uses the pediatric needle and it's not that bad.
Come to find out the first two vials they drew they lost one (?!) and ran the wrong tests on the other!
So now I have major hospital anxiety over these people handling my tests. (How do I know I got the right results?) Good times.
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