I’ve known for months that I have no veins. I’m the one who jokes about being clinically dead when the medical students can’t find my pulse (in either arm), I’ve got one spot on one arm that if its in a good mood will give up a dribble of blood, and I’m pretty sure that its a frustrated sigh from dealing with my arms rather than at having to be working the night shift that numerous nurses have come out with.
That one vein is my friend normally. Its been behaving for the last two weeks. But last night when I needed a line put in for fluids (to increase my blood pressure, of all things…), that one had already been used to give a blood sample so they decided to try every other vein in my arms. A hard job on most days, but damn near impossible when your hands look like inflated gloves with big sausage fingers and your arms are filled with fluid that has them twice their normal size. Damn pre-eclampsia, you do make me more attractive by the second.
Two nurses and a doctor later, the remains of me are a pincushion. For holes that didn’t lead to veins there was definitely enough effort in stopping blood from coming out of them upon this decision. And everywhere else is more ouch filled than that one lovely (now very bruised in an X marks the Spot way) well used vein. And to add insult to injury, the canula fell out by this morning so theres a chance that I’ll have to do the whole thing again later. Hospital life, you are the anti-craic.
On the other hand, we seem to be playing roulette with the blood pressure at the moment, or rather my body is getting too used to the copious doses of medication to treat it and needs more and more. Which is mellowing out the Little Man a bit too much. May be seeing him sooner than we thought.