Monday, September 24, 2012

Oh...There's That Vein

I love it when I have patients that make me smile and laugh.  They make the night go by so much faster.  One patient in particular had me about in fits and it wasn't even my patient.
The nurse I was working with asked me to go in and see if I could get some blood cultures on the patient.  Now many times when getting blood cultures we have to stick the patient twice...once on each arm.  The patient was upset and was complaining and trying to refuse.  Normally I let the patients refuse, however this patient was running a very high temp and the blood cultures were important.
I asked the tech to come in and help and asked her to distract the patient.  As the tech was talking to her, I tied the tourniquet and started to look for a good vein to get blood from. There was nothing.  I could not find a vein for the life of me.  Then the tech started to ask the patient about the men in her life.
The patient started to tell us about a man named Willard and another one named Ted.  She went on and on and was blushing as she was talking.  It wasn't very hard to figure out that she had a crush on these two guys (granted she was confused, but she was crushing on these two).  As she kept talking, her veins magically began to appear.  Not only did they appear but they popped out nice and big.  I was able to quickly get both of the sticks in and get the blood I needed.  She was so preoccupied with her guys that she was not even aware of when I stuck her.  It was a little amusing and made for a good laugh. 

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