it's a hard knock life

I gave blood on Friday. The building I work in is four stories tall and there are conference rooms in the center of each floor. I made my way to the 3 rd floor conference room and one of the volunteers asked me to lie down on the bed next to the window. I should mention that one wall of each conference room is made entirely of glass. You can look down into the lobby of the building or across to the other side of all the floors. As I was lying there next to the window I noticed that there were people up on the 4 th floor looking down into the conference room window watching me. I should have known this was going to be a memorable experience if I was already drawing an audience.

The gentlemen in the red scrubs came over and introduced himself. He started in on his life story and cracked a few jokes while he got things ready. I had some doubts in regards to his abilities with a needle but decided not to question him. WRONG DECISION! I looked away as he began to stick me with the needle. Everything went downhill from there. Apparently he had managed to forget a few steps before pushing that needle into my vein. Instead of calmly fixing the situation he began to yell. I immediately turned my head preparing for the worst…possibly the loss of my right arm. He then realizes that, on top of everything else, he had forgotten the tape to hold the needle and tube in place. At this point he’s just standing there holding the needle in my arm and yelling for help. HELLO!!! You have a huge, fat, long needle stuck in my arm! Can you at least pretend that it’s going to be okay?? I’m certain that at this point, my blood pressure and heart rate were both at dangerously high levels. All I wanted to do was get out of that room. It seemed to take hours for that bag of blood to fill up and I cringed every time that guy came over to check on me. I thought, maybe if I just kept still and quiet he wouldn’t touch me anymore. Surely I was more capable of finishing up with things than he was. Finally, I was finished! I grabbed the cookies, juice and free t-shirt and high-tailed it out of there. They yelled for me to stay and sit awhile to make sure I was okay. I just ignored them and kept going. I would rather have fainted in the stairwell than sit in there any longer. I have never been so happy to get back to work.

Next time I give blood I may ask for some kind of proof of knowledge and competence before I let anyone near me with that needle!