Why do I always get the new nurse?

I've ranted before about the antiquated, bigoted blood donation rules and how I'm not going to let them keep me from saving lives through perfectly safe donations. Heck, I'm even CMV-negative, and less than half of the population (even the straight ones!) can say that. Okay, I'm not going to rant about that again. That's not the reason for this post anyhow.

Being unemployed, I have a fair amount of time on my hands. So I've been running errands and making the most of the time. Actually, what I should do is a relax a bit, but that's another story. So one of the things I had on my schedule today was a visit to the local vampires (although they prefer to call themselves "blood services"). I had scheduled a platelet donation.

The RN assigned to me was no kid. He looked to be at least 20 years older than me, but I soon learned that he was new to doing this kind of work. And as many nurses--and doctors--can tell you, doing a good, clean needle stick is a special skill.

To do the most efficient platelet extraction, they use two needles, one in each arm. The one in one arm draws blood out into the fancy centrifuge-containing, platelet extracting machine, while the other one returns the remainder of the blood (missing some platelets, plasma, etc.) into the other arm.

So the extracting needle went into my left arm. No problem there. When they tie off that arm, there's a vein that I don't find easy to see but every IV nurse looks at like it's a Christmas present. My right arm, on the other hand, is another story. Never an easy stick, but this process left no choice but to find a vein.

So he started poking around my right elbow. He felt that he'd found a vein. It was quite far off of center, near the side of my elbow. Um, okay. I'm no nurse, so I shut up. Well, sort of. The needle stick--never a comfortable thing--didn't feel right. I told him so, but he felt he'd found a good vein. Hmmm. Fine.

So we got things rolling, and it soon got uncomfortable. I told him something was wrong. He checked it out. He looked at the "reinfusion" pressure on the machine. Everything was looking good--except that it didn't feel right to me.

And then things got interesting--as my arm began to expand!!! Yes, he hadn't found a vein. Perhaps a veniole or some such, but mainly what was happening was that the machine was returning blood, saline and such right into the muscle and other tissues of my arm. At the moment, I have a lovely bloody patch under my skin, and it promises to get much bigger.

This particular mishap is a new one for me. I've had regular blood donations go wrong when the nurse put the needle clean through the back side of the vein, and that always brings a lovely huge bruise that takes weeks to heal. This may really get good. We shall see.

I should note that most visits to the blood donation folks result in almost unnoticeable little marks from very clean punctures, because most of the nurses there have done thousands of them. However, if there's a new nurse in the house, I always seem to draw him or her. Is there a sign on my head? I'm still glad I went, knowing how one of these donations can help a number of people, but MY ARM HURTS! That I could live without! :)