Doctors and needles--yuck!

I absolutely hate needles...I'm one of those people who is terrified of them but can't keep my eyes away when they stick me! Yesterday, I had my glucola test. If you've been pregnant, then you know this is where you drink some orange Fanta kinda stuff and then they take your blood an hour later to check for gestational diabetes. As I survived the poke, I proudly told the nurse that this would be my last time to have labwork until the baby comes!! Don't ever say that... I had my regular appt that afternoon and upon looking at my labwork they found that 1)they didn't do the anemia/white blood count, so someone needed to come to the room and poke me again, and 2)my blood sugar was in the abnormal zone so I have to go back in 2 weeks and do the 3 HOUR glucola test (3 orange drinks...3 hours...3 pokes). In the midst of all of this, my mind goes back to the little Czech clinic in Lusaka, Zambia, where I had my bloodwork done for my first pregnancy. Here's the email I wrote home later that day:

February 14, 2005
"I walk in and there's NO white people there, only Zambians. I was like, hmm...Well one lady looked like a nurse, and sure enough she took me into a room with her little vampire tray and sat me down to take my blood. First she felt the need to explain, "The doctor wants a blood test and urine test, so I will take blood and then for the urine test I will give you a cup and you will, um...use the bathroom in it and then leave it here." Ok, thanks nurse.

Then came the process of trying to get the tourniquet around my arm. After several tries and about a million, "oh I'm so sorry..." that was done. By this point, I was terrified, but I looked down and saw a big fat green vein, so I thought things were looking up for me. Well, then she looks at my vein and heaves a big sigh and says "let's just hope I can find the vein..." She proceeds to tap my arm, make me flex, and repeats this process for awhile saying "hmm...." the whole time.

Then, she kinda looks around like maybe she's forgotten something and says "oh!" and goes and grabs some latex gloves. She comes back and taps my vein a few more times, has me flex, looks around again, and picks up a pair of scissors. She then proceeds to cut the index finger off of her glove so that she could tap my vein again. (the scissors were dull so this takes awhile). At this point, nothing was that comical, but the following comments did require an email back home.

The woman picks up the needle, looks at my arm, looks up at me, gives a huge sigh, and says "Jesus help me...." SHE SAID THAT!!! I'm sure I was white at this point.

From here on out, she pricked me, got the bottle fastened in, took all my blood, and we were done. What an experience. I assured her at the end that she had done a great job--I'm sure I'm one of the first few patients she'd taken blood from!"

So maybe I won't complain about my 3 hour glucola test in a couple of weeks... :)