Couldn't we have a "new" blogger named adiemala who is gradually narrating her his previous experiences with rehab? Hiding in plain sight always works. Be well and make friends with some crazyier than normal people.
But if only alameida called herself "contra costa," he would be so totally fooled! Oh wait, I just gave it all away. Shit. "Marin"? Oh, God, I'm making it worse!
Since you have net access, maybe you can troll Ebay for Y & Z so you can have a complete set!
And then they came and made me take pills from a teeny cup and watched me all super-hawkishly, just like on TV!
Wow. They don't think they can trust you yet. Smart, yet insulting.
I'm strangely enjoying myself and feeling very hopeful about the future.
It's in somebody else's hands, so it's just like a vacation. Plus, yer making rehab appealing. A real public service, given my visits (to see other people) to such places were not so much fun, no.
ash
['Hopefully tomorrow will continue the trend.']
Once I had blood taken and they said I must have been dehydrated since nothing came out, but the doctor told me later that the nurse just missed the vein.
So my suggestiong for more blogging entertainment is you offer to find the vein yourself.
I have wanted to give advice before (I think you'll find that one on the left is...), but it would be hilarious if was just like, gimme that. see? easy-peasy!
Once I had blood taken and they said I must have been dehydrated since nothing came out
I call bullshit. I've had blood taken on average every two weeks for the last twelve years: hot and cold, thirsty and satiated, drunk, sober and hungover. Never once has a competent phlebotomist failed to get a sample.
19: That, and it was the third person that day they told me who had felt faint or fainted under the young nurse's care (and the fourth came back up to the doctor from the clinic as I was recuperating with mandatory orange juice.) Probably because she kept missing the damn vein.
I was under the impression that fainting tends to happen once blood is successfully drawn: you see your blood, your blood pressure drops because on the savannah when you had a lot of blood leaving your body it was a good idea to not have it flowing so copiously, the blood leaves your head, you faint and keel off he examining table and bounce of a piece of furniture and land with your face on the carpet and wind up looking like GW Bush after losing the fight with the pretzel except this was two months before that happened. So I am told.
If one's survival depends on getting away from whatever back on the veldt is taking your blood, I have to say that sweating profusely & having your blood pressure drop to the point where they won't tell you what it is is unlikely to defeat the lions and tigers.
his is totally weird if you don't black out because it's a fun nearly disembodied sort of experience.
I had a nurse answer the phone once while in the middle of taking blood -- swivelling round on his chair without even looking at what he was doing to my arm. As a result he twisted the needle 90 degrees through the vein, then left the feckin tourniquet on for about 10 minutes while my arm turned white as he spoke on the phone.
He only released the tourniquet and removed the needle when I started swearing loudly at him. The twisted needle resulted in huge haematoma and my hand hurt for a week.
Generally, however, most times I've had blood taken it's been easy for them and for me.
I think advice giving is warranted. There's basically only one vein that will actually bear any blood with reliability, and it's way on the outside of the inside-elbow, so I just tell them what's up. Better than having to get stuck like 5 times.
This is all part of a general problem of my not bleeding- I think I overclot or something. There have been a few times where I've gotten cut, and someone will look at it and say "um, why aren't you bleeding?"
The last time I gave blood the nurse screwed it up so badly that I have a scar on the inside of my arm from it. And she screwed it up so badly they had to throw out my pint! So I didn't even get the satisfaction of knowing it was for a good cause. Bah.
A good will is good not because of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of the volition; that is, it is good in itself, and considered by itself is to be esteemed much higher than all that can be brought about by it in favour of any inclination, nay even of the sum total of all inclinations. Even if it should happen that, owing to special disfavour of fortune, or the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature, this will should wholly lack power to accomplish its purpose, if with its greatest efforts it should yet achieve nothing, and there should remain only the good will (not, to be sure, a mere wish, but the summoning of all means in our power), then, like a jewel, it would still shine by its own light, as a thing
which has its whole value in itself. Its usefulness or fruitfulness can neither add nor take away anything from this value.
I actually like many of Kant's phrases (in translation)! E.g. (I don't know what translation this is from but it's not the Guyer/Wood one) examples are the go-kart of judgment.
I don't like giving blood, so I just tell them up front that it makes me dizzy, and they raise my feet, lower my head, and stick the needle in. Usually if you say that you're a needle chicken, they pay attention and do a really great job.
I have lousy veins -- I've been told that they're unusually deep, and that they move around when poked. Every time I give blood I've got someone in there prodding me with a needle for five minutes, and then they go get a supervisor.
On the other hand, I don't really give blood any more -- the last three times I've tried, my iron has been too low.
37 gets it exactly right. *Shudder* I had to give blood for my father when he went in for surgery (he wanted a supply of family blood, just in case) and it was pretty traumatic. Especially the finger-prick beforehand, and the detailed questions on my sexual history while my sister sat in the next chair.
Okay, totally unsupported hypothesis: it seems anecdotally that men are more likely to have a problem with needles than women. Would there be any reason for that? All I know is that all three of my most recent boyfriends have expressed a very very strong distaste for anything involving needles, and there seem to be some dudes on here with that same view, while (also anecdotally) there don't seem to be as many women that do. I know I don't (s33krit: I actually kind of really like giving blood, and am worried if this means I am weird and sick).
My sister once threatened to jump out of an ambulance onto a highway if the paramedics put an IV into her. From the front seat, I told them they'd do best to take her word for it.
She's said that pregnancy pretty much forced her to get over it, though.
Yeah, maybe I just ran with a weird crowd. It first occurred to me in college, when I donated plasma for cash, and all four of my (male) bandmates were like "YOU DID WHAT??!!?! NOOO!"
I don't actually have a conscious problem with needles, even if I have an unconsciousness problem with them. Thought it was kind of funny that some people picked out the needle scene in Pulp Fiction as hard to watch.
I developed a revulsion to needles only recently. I found myself watching The Wire, completely unable to watch scenes involving drug use. But I didn't have this problem during the previous season.
Also: cauliflower no longer makes me want to leave the dinner table.
Um, I was in a band in college for a couple years? It was me and four of my guy friends, who after discovering that I could sing decided that teh hott chick singer was going to be their ticket to fame or something. Of course, I'm not really that hot, and didn't want to sing, I wanted to play guitar, so there were a lot of fights about that. I ended up playing keyboard and, on a couple of songs, bass. They're still playing, but I moved away to go to law school and quit the band. I actually hate the music they're doing now. It's pretentious prog-rock crap that isn't even very good, and an attempt at math rock by a bunch of people who have little sense of rhythm (except the drummer, who is awesome).
Then again, the music we were playing when I was with them was pretty crappy too. My problem with making music is I have (imho) a pretty good aesthetic sense and very high standards, so I pretty much hate everything I do, even though it's objectively pretty good.
That was a lot of "pretty"s. Whoever said I don't write like a girl?
I had a problem with needles in Trainspotting and generally have a problem with watching needles; I don't have much of a problem with shots and blood tests because I don't watch--anymore.
One time I had a blood test and all went well. A week later the hospital called to say that my sample broke in the centrifuge and they had to take another one. I went back in and the nurse put a needle in my arm and I could see the blood start coming out. But apparently it wasn't coming out fast enough.
The nurse said, "Well, that's not going to work", pulled the needle out, had me hold cotton over the still bleeding wound, prepared a new needle and syringe and then jabbed it into a different spot on my arm. That got the sample, but on my way out I had to sit down in a nearby waiting room feeling sick for a while before I could go outside.
I made a decent amount of money some years back doing drug studies, mostly based on being completely unfazed by needles and being able to show up with a clean tox screen when given a week's notice. But I earned my callbacks during the first trial by not complaining when they inserted a catheter into an artery in my wrist to take arterial blood-gas levels.
Tuns out, you have to go way the hell into somebody's wrist before you hit an artery and many of the other paid guinea pigs kinda freaked out about it.
I have a friend who's very into donating blood; each time the 56 day waiting period is up, he goes again. He's been doing this pretty consistently since he was first old enough to give. I don't have a huge problem with needles, but it takes a long time when I give blood, and I get pretty light-headed. Once or twice a year is my max for that.
66: They novocaine your arm first, so the puncture doesn't hurt, though you can still kinda feel the pressure of it snaking up into your artery. It also spurts a little at first when they hit the artery, though, and that can be a bit unsettling.
I used to be like that when I worked across the street from a blood center -- not on the dot every 56 days, but at least every three months or so I'd wander in. For something that's not all that unpleasant, it's a good thing to do -- I was in it for the karma points. And the Oreos.
But my iron is low these days, and there isn't a drop in center nearby.
I once saw and listened to a Hafler Trio LP with a very good abstract prose fiction on each side of the inner sleeve. This is rare enough to be remarking. The 'very good' part, I mean, not the rest (where the reference class is avant-garde or avant-gardish music recordings, not the Hafler Trio).
There's a short story included in Jim White's Wrong-Eyed Jesus, and that's a good album. I haven't read the story but silvana was saying that the presence of fiction is a sign of the poor quality of the music, not the fiction.
I've given for years too. I'm now on a program where they take more red corpuscles and centrifuge it, while putting the plasma back. So you feel a cool sensation when it's going back in. Always the same questions: "Have you had sex since 1977, even once, with someone born in... (list of sub-saharan countries)". During the election, I said to the nurse, "You know, John Kerry would have to answer yes to that one." Huh?
I worked as a phlebotomist for years. At best I could have the needle in and out before the patient noticed. Not a joke.
The tricks are: 1.) move the needle quickly, not slowly; 2.) stop before you hit the other side of the vein -- you really only move the needle about 1/4" or a little more; and 3.) distract the patient slightly in a noncommital way right before poking. I'd say, "OK, here goes" and stick the needle in between the "OK" and the "here goes". You can't surprise people, but you can't warn them either or they'll tense up.
The best vein on junkies is in the back of their upper arm. They can't reach it.
The time I gave blood, the nurse was a swaggering, dykey woman (NTTAWWT) with great big white teeth and a discreet spray of blood across the front of her uniform. Nothing excessive, just a nice accessory.
For patients that needed more calming down, Emerson would narrate trivia about Genghis Khan and the difficulties of translating classical Chinese and then wham! in goes the needle.
Total wimp here. Cold sweat and lightheadedness just from reading the thread, and I nearly passed out reading apostropher's story. Pain I can handle, but something about bodily fluids going through tubes into or out of my body makes my consciousness want to take a vacation.
After a needle incident, I once had a tiny elderly doctor tell me, "You're way too big for us to pick up off the floor when you pass out like that, so next time let's use the bed."
The last time I tried to give blood, I knew better than to look at it, but when the first bag was full and they switched to the second, the nurse said something that translates into English as "You really put out!" Great. I'm really putting out. My blood. Gushing. Spurting through a tube with enough enthusiasm that you felt compelled to comment on it...
I woke up with all of my clothes soaked through with sweat and sheepishly drank the complimentary box of juice.
84 & 85: It's shockingly easy. The draw blood for tests, and that's it. You go into a database and let them know when you move, and if someday someone happens to be a match, they get in touch and ask if you're willing to donate. Most people's best matches are from relatives, so a random match is pretty unlikely, but you might save someone's life someday with what's really a pretty easy procedure.
OT, but mildly related confession: Apostropher, I'm going to feel really guilty for all the hate I directed Redick's way if his back injury drops him to the late first round or below.
I'm on the marrow list but it occurs to me I haven't updated my address. I'm going to have to look into how to do that. I don't know where my documentation is.
Thanks, if I can't find my card tomorrow, I'll give them all the information they need to figure out who I am. I don't even remember the donor center; it was through a campus marrow donor drive.
How does a person's race or ethnicity affect matching?
Because tissue type is inherited, patients are most likely to match someone of their same race and ethnicity. There is a special need to recruit more donors who identify themselves as: Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino.
There's obviously still a need for anyone to donate, but the statistics I saw showed that a lot of ethnicracial ancestry groups are very poorly represented in the registry. It looks like there's also a specific program aimed at finding mixed-race ancestry donors since such matches can be even harder to find.
There are probably good reasons for me to use "race" and "ethnicity" like the organizations do, but I like "ancestry." So there.
If you want more medical ickiness, heparin -- one of the most common anti-coagulents given to people with thrombosis -- is produced from "porcine mucosa".
Beef heparin is sometimes used for people with allergies or food taboos. However, kosher laws are apparently not very strictly applied to life-saving medicines.
I had a blood test today. The technician was seated when she put the needle in and then, with her hand still on it, she leaned to the side a bit; stood up; stepped around to the side; said, "it's really coming out slowly"; leaned forward; asked, "do your veins roll?"; heard me ask, "what do you mean by roll?"; said, "never mind, I got it"; and explained, while my blood finally came out, that sometimes people's veins "roll" away from the needle as soon as it's inserted.
I now have multiple marks on my arm. On the plus side, no appendicitis. Just four days of unexplained abdominal pains.
Couldn't we have a "new" blogger named adiemala who is gradually narrating
herhis previous experiences with rehab? Hiding in plain sight always works. Be well and make friends with some crazyier than normal people.Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:02 PM
Husband X isn't an idiot, w/d.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:10 PM
But if only alameida called herself "contra costa," he would be so totally fooled! Oh wait, I just gave it all away. Shit. "Marin"? Oh, God, I'm making it worse!
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:12 PM
Arlington?
Moeser?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:17 PM
Akron
Posted by md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:20 PM
Vista Park?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:20 PM
Alameida, the street?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:23 PM
Grizzly Peak?
Holy Hill?
El Cerrito?
Mt. Diablo?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:26 PM
Center City, MN?
Twin Peaks?
Posted by md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:30 PM
Who killed Boy Staunton?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:30 PM
Indian Rock?
Cragmont?
Waldo?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:31 PM
David?
Wadsworth?
Greenleaf?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:32 PM
That rules out Deptford.
Posted by md 20/400 | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 10:33 PM
Ooh, Indian Rock. I suddenly want to go home and avoid my parents.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06-12-06 11:32 PM
Husband X
Since you have net access, maybe you can troll Ebay for Y & Z so you can have a complete set!
And then they came and made me take pills from a teeny cup and watched me all super-hawkishly, just like on TV!
Wow. They don't think they can trust you yet. Smart, yet insulting.
I'm strangely enjoying myself and feeling very hopeful about the future.
It's in somebody else's hands, so it's just like a vacation. Plus, yer making rehab appealing. A real public service, given my visits (to see other people) to such places were not so much fun, no.
ash
['Hopefully tomorrow will continue the trend.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:00 AM
"Unf."
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 5:03 AM
Once I had blood taken and they said I must have been dehydrated since nothing came out, but the doctor told me later that the nurse just missed the vein.
So my suggestiong for more blogging entertainment is you offer to find the vein yourself.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 6:35 AM
I have wanted to give advice before (I think you'll find that one on the left is...), but it would be hilarious if was just like, gimme that. see? easy-peasy!
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 7:29 AM
Once I had blood taken and they said I must have been dehydrated since nothing came out
I call bullshit. I've had blood taken on average every two weeks for the last twelve years: hot and cold, thirsty and satiated, drunk, sober and hungover. Never once has a competent phlebotomist failed to get a sample.
Posted by OneFatEnglishman | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 7:34 AM
Weird... I've been going through life thinking phlebotomy meant prenology.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 7:45 AM
First link in 20 should go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodletting
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 7:46 AM
19: Doesn't this, "but the doctor told me later that the nurse just missed the vein" imply that the original phlebotomist was not, in fact, competent?
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 7:58 AM
19: That, and it was the third person that day they told me who had felt faint or fainted under the young nurse's care (and the fourth came back up to the doctor from the clinic as I was recuperating with mandatory orange juice.) Probably because she kept missing the damn vein.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 7:58 AM
I was under the impression that fainting tends to happen once blood is successfully drawn: you see your blood, your blood pressure drops because on the savannah when you had a lot of blood leaving your body it was a good idea to not have it flowing so copiously, the blood leaves your head, you faint and keel off he examining table and bounce of a piece of furniture and land with your face on the carpet and wind up looking like GW Bush after losing the fight with the pretzel except this was two months before that happened. So I am told.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:06 AM
One of the few upsides to having veins that glow blue through my skin is the nurse never, ever misses.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:07 AM
If one's survival depends on getting away from whatever back on the veldt is taking your blood, I have to say that sweating profusely & having your blood pressure drop to the point where they won't tell you what it is is unlikely to defeat the lions and tigers.
his is totally weird if you don't black out because it's a fun nearly disembodied sort of experience.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:09 AM
I had a nurse answer the phone once while in the middle of taking blood -- swivelling round on his chair without even looking at what he was doing to my arm. As a result he twisted the needle 90 degrees through the vein, then left the feckin tourniquet on for about 10 minutes while my arm turned white as he spoke on the phone.
He only released the tourniquet and removed the needle when I started swearing loudly at him. The twisted needle resulted in huge haematoma and my hand hurt for a week.
Generally, however, most times I've had blood taken it's been easy for them and for me.
Posted by Matt McGrattan | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:32 AM
I think advice giving is warranted. There's basically only one vein that will actually bear any blood with reliability, and it's way on the outside of the inside-elbow, so I just tell them what's up. Better than having to get stuck like 5 times.
This is all part of a general problem of my not bleeding- I think I overclot or something. There have been a few times where I've gotten cut, and someone will look at it and say "um, why aren't you bleeding?"
Too bad it's not a superpower or something.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:42 AM
The last time I went to give blood I got really flushed and hot and started breathing rapidly and shallowly.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 11:30 AM
Sounds like it makes you aroused, ben.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 11:38 AM
The last time I gave blood the nurse screwed it up so badly that I have a scar on the inside of my arm from it. And she screwed it up so badly they had to throw out my pint! So I didn't even get the satisfaction of knowing it was for a good cause. Bah.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 11:41 AM
knowing it was for a good cause.
Phlebotomist training?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 11:56 AM
Posted by Immanuel K. Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 12:13 PM
It's too bad Kant wasn't an immoral cad. We need some to theorize the categorical denial.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 12:22 PM
"the niggardly provision of a step-motherly nature"?
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 12:25 PM
Manny couldn't bring himself to say "incompetent phlebomtomist," JM.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 12:26 PM
yuck needles YUCK
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 12:27 PM
Kant had a way with words!
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 12:29 PM
It involved taking them out to the woodshed and beating the meaning out of them.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 12:44 PM
I actually like many of Kant's phrases (in translation)! E.g. (I don't know what translation this is from but it's not the Guyer/Wood one) examples are the go-kart of judgment.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 12:53 PM
I don't like giving blood, so I just tell them up front that it makes me dizzy, and they raise my feet, lower my head, and stick the needle in. Usually if you say that you're a needle chicken, they pay attention and do a really great job.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 12:58 PM
I have lousy veins -- I've been told that they're unusually deep, and that they move around when poked. Every time I give blood I've got someone in there prodding me with a needle for five minutes, and then they go get a supervisor.
On the other hand, I don't really give blood any more -- the last three times I've tried, my iron has been too low.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:02 PM
42 -- obviously you are not eating enough red meat.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:04 PM
I'm feeling a little faint right now, from reading this thread.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:07 PM
Arlington?
Moeser?
Richmond? Central?
Posted by Josh | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:17 PM
I've actually been turned away for having low blood pressure. Since Mr. B. has hbp, I'm hoping that PK's genes have decided to split the difference.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:21 PM
Just bring a salt lick with you.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:25 PM
37 gets it exactly right. *Shudder* I had to give blood for my father when he went in for surgery (he wanted a supply of family blood, just in case) and it was pretty traumatic. Especially the finger-prick beforehand, and the detailed questions on my sexual history while my sister sat in the next chair.
At least I have good veins.
Posted by mrh | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:33 PM
Okay, totally unsupported hypothesis: it seems anecdotally that men are more likely to have a problem with needles than women. Would there be any reason for that? All I know is that all three of my most recent boyfriends have expressed a very very strong distaste for anything involving needles, and there seem to be some dudes on here with that same view, while (also anecdotally) there don't seem to be as many women that do. I know I don't (s33krit: I actually kind of really like giving blood, and am worried if this means I am weird and sick).
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:37 PM
My sister once threatened to jump out of an ambulance onto a highway if the paramedics put an IV into her. From the front seat, I told them they'd do best to take her word for it.
She's said that pregnancy pretty much forced her to get over it, though.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:41 PM
Anecdotally, I would have thought the other way 'round.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:43 PM
49: Penetration-phobic homophobes, all of them.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:44 PM
Yeah, maybe I just ran with a weird crowd. It first occurred to me in college, when I donated plasma for cash, and all four of my (male) bandmates were like "YOU DID WHAT??!!?! NOOO!"
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:44 PM
I don't actually have a conscious problem with needles, even if I have an unconsciousness problem with them. Thought it was kind of funny that some people picked out the needle scene in Pulp Fiction as hard to watch.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:44 PM
Hey silvana, tell us more about your band.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:45 PM
52 -- yeah, that was my thought too, from the opposite side, "Yeah well women are used to having things stuck into them."
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:46 PM
And, what Weiner said in 55.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:46 PM
I developed a revulsion to needles only recently. I found myself watching The Wire, completely unable to watch scenes involving drug use. But I didn't have this problem during the previous season.
Also: cauliflower no longer makes me want to leave the dinner table.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:49 PM
I love that thrilling pain when the needle just enters my receptive flesh.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:49 PM
I think 50 answers 49.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:51 PM
People have problems with cauliflower? Most lovely of crucifers? How could this be?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:51 PM
Um, I was in a band in college for a couple years? It was me and four of my guy friends, who after discovering that I could sing decided that teh hott chick singer was going to be their ticket to fame or something. Of course, I'm not really that hot, and didn't want to sing, I wanted to play guitar, so there were a lot of fights about that. I ended up playing keyboard and, on a couple of songs, bass. They're still playing, but I moved away to go to law school and quit the band. I actually hate the music they're doing now. It's pretentious prog-rock crap that isn't even very good, and an attempt at math rock by a bunch of people who have little sense of rhythm (except the drummer, who is awesome).
Then again, the music we were playing when I was with them was pretty crappy too. My problem with making music is I have (imho) a pretty good aesthetic sense and very high standards, so I pretty much hate everything I do, even though it's objectively pretty good.
That was a lot of "pretty"s. Whoever said I don't write like a girl?
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:53 PM
I had a problem with needles in Trainspotting and generally have a problem with watching needles; I don't have much of a problem with shots and blood tests because I don't watch--anymore.
One time I had a blood test and all went well. A week later the hospital called to say that my sample broke in the centrifuge and they had to take another one. I went back in and the nurse put a needle in my arm and I could see the blood start coming out. But apparently it wasn't coming out fast enough.
The nurse said, "Well, that's not going to work", pulled the needle out, had me hold cotton over the still bleeding wound, prepared a new needle and syringe and then jabbed it into a different spot on my arm. That got the sample, but on my way out I had to sit down in a nearby waiting room feeling sick for a while before I could go outside.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 1:59 PM
I actually kind of really like giving blood
Me too; there's something sorta sexy about it.
I made a decent amount of money some years back doing drug studies, mostly based on being completely unfazed by needles and being able to show up with a clean tox screen when given a week's notice. But I earned my callbacks during the first trial by not complaining when they inserted a catheter into an artery in my wrist to take arterial blood-gas levels.
Tuns out, you have to go way the hell into somebody's wrist before you hit an artery and many of the other paid guinea pigs kinda freaked out about it.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:04 PM
59, 64: Thank god I'm not the only one.
Although it's still a little fucked up.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:07 PM
I feel a little sick just reading about that, apostropher.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:15 PM
I have a friend who's very into donating blood; each time the 56 day waiting period is up, he goes again. He's been doing this pretty consistently since he was first old enough to give. I don't have a huge problem with needles, but it takes a long time when I give blood, and I get pretty light-headed. Once or twice a year is my max for that.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:20 PM
66: They novocaine your arm first, so the puncture doesn't hurt, though you can still kinda feel the pressure of it snaking up into your artery. It also spurts a little at first when they hit the artery, though, and that can be a bit unsettling.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:27 PM
I used to be like that when I worked across the street from a blood center -- not on the dot every 56 days, but at least every three months or so I'd wander in. For something that's not all that unpleasant, it's a good thing to do -- I was in it for the karma points. And the Oreos.
But my iron is low these days, and there isn't a drop in center nearby.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:27 PM
The catheterized artery isn't a lot of fun, it's true.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:33 PM
So what's the band called?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:36 PM
Of COURSE it spurts, apostropher. That's how you're supposed to tell if someone has an arterial wound that needs a tourniquet now now now.
Oh, gross! I'm never clicking into this thread again.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:49 PM
Oh, it's so embarrassing (because of my opinion on their music), but fine. Google E/very Ot/her Fat/e.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 2:51 PM
Looking at their bio, someone should direct them to def. 2 of prosaic.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 3:13 PM
I've never donated blood; iron count is always too low. I don't mind needles, but the last time I said that the nurse missed all my veins so.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 3:20 PM
Hah!
The fact that there's a fucking novella included with the CD says more than my description ever could.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 3:20 PM
I once saw and listened to a Hafler Trio LP with a very good abstract prose fiction on each side of the inner sleeve. This is rare enough to be remarking. The 'very good' part, I mean, not the rest (where the reference class is avant-garde or avant-gardish music recordings, not the Hafler Trio).
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 3:35 PM
There's a short story included in Jim White's Wrong-Eyed Jesus, and that's a good album. I haven't read the story but silvana was saying that the presence of fiction is a sign of the poor quality of the music, not the fiction.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 3:38 PM
Which is not incompatible with there being exceptions such as Wrong-Eyed Jesus and Quadrophenia.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 3:53 PM
I was indeed talking about the quality of the music, although the fiction in question is, as advertised, prosaic. I haven't read it, but I just know.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 3:55 PM
Of course, I'm not really that hot
You've posted a picture before, and I call bullshit on that statement.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 4:08 PM
I've given for years too. I'm now on a program where they take more red corpuscles and centrifuge it, while putting the plasma back. So you feel a cool sensation when it's going back in. Always the same questions: "Have you had sex since 1977, even once, with someone born in... (list of sub-saharan countries)". During the election, I said to the nurse, "You know, John Kerry would have to answer yes to that one." Huh?
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 4:57 PM
I worked as a phlebotomist for years. At best I could have the needle in and out before the patient noticed. Not a joke.
The tricks are: 1.) move the needle quickly, not slowly; 2.) stop before you hit the other side of the vein -- you really only move the needle about 1/4" or a little more; and 3.) distract the patient slightly in a noncommital way right before poking. I'd say, "OK, here goes" and stick the needle in between the "OK" and the "here goes". You can't surprise people, but you can't warn them either or they'll tense up.
The best vein on junkies is in the back of their upper arm. They can't reach it.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 4:59 PM
Ok, how many of y'all are signed up on the marrow donation program? I mean, what with friends of ours having cancer and all.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 5:12 PM
Don't think I've heard of it before now.
http://www.marrow.org/DONOR/abcs_of_donation.html
Posted by I don't pay | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 5:14 PM
That's awesome, Emerson.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 5:20 PM
There's a blood bank near my house that's painted bright red.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 5:30 PM
The time I gave blood, the nurse was a swaggering, dykey woman (NTTAWWT) with great big white teeth and a discreet spray of blood across the front of her uniform. Nothing excessive, just a nice accessory.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 5:39 PM
to 83: that's what friends are for!
Posted by alameida | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 7:19 PM
For patients that needed more calming down, Emerson would narrate trivia about Genghis Khan and the difficulties of translating classical Chinese and then wham! in goes the needle.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 7:32 PM
78 -- Have you seen the movie? It is a great one.
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:06 PM
Total wimp here. Cold sweat and lightheadedness just from reading the thread, and I nearly passed out reading apostropher's story. Pain I can handle, but something about bodily fluids going through tubes into or out of my body makes my consciousness want to take a vacation.
After a needle incident, I once had a tiny elderly doctor tell me, "You're way too big for us to pick up off the floor when you pass out like that, so next time let's use the bed."
The last time I tried to give blood, I knew better than to look at it, but when the first bag was full and they switched to the second, the nurse said something that translates into English as "You really put out!" Great. I'm really putting out. My blood. Gushing. Spurting through a tube with enough enthusiasm that you felt compelled to comment on it...
I woke up with all of my clothes soaked through with sweat and sheepishly drank the complimentary box of juice.
Posted by Big Ben | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:23 PM
84 & 85: It's shockingly easy. The draw blood for tests, and that's it. You go into a database and let them know when you move, and if someday someone happens to be a match, they get in touch and ask if you're willing to donate. Most people's best matches are from relatives, so a random match is pretty unlikely, but you might save someone's life someday with what's really a pretty easy procedure.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:46 PM
OT, but mildly related confession: Apostropher, I'm going to feel really guilty for all the hate I directed Redick's way if his back injury drops him to the late first round or below.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:47 PM
something about bodily fluids going through tubes into or out of my body makes my consciousness want to take a vacation
Wow, that's gotta really suck for your partner.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 8:50 PM
94: It's the Duke curse. Jason Williams, Bobby Hurley, Grant Hill, etc. Long tradition at work.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 9:04 PM
95:
Somehow the dynamics change when the tube is made of flesh. I'm not sure how I'd react if I had to come through a catheter.
Posted by Big Ben | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 9:08 PM
One does what one must, Big Ben.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 9:09 PM
Shorter 97: That's not what I meant...
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 9:46 PM
97: So if they hook you up to an iv line made of pig intestine, you're good?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 10:49 PM
Aw yeah, the chitlinjection.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 10:58 PM
100: Sausage-linking? I know it's blasphemy in apo's eyes to say no to pork, so I'll suggest that one next time I'm hospitalized.
Posted by Big Ben | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 11:15 PM
I'm on the marrow list but it occurs to me I haven't updated my address. I'm going to have to look into how to do that. I don't know where my documentation is.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-13-06 11:54 PM
The link upthread actually has a link to use to do that--I wasn't sure if I was up to date either.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 12:10 AM
Thanks, if I can't find my card tomorrow, I'll give them all the information they need to figure out who I am. I don't even remember the donor center; it was through a campus marrow donor drive.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 12:25 AM
Also from I don't pay's link in 85:
There's obviously still a need for anyone to donate, but the statistics I saw showed that a lot of
ethnicracialancestry groups are very poorly represented in the registry. It looks like there's also a specific program aimed at finding mixed-raceancestry donors since such matches can be even harder to find.There are probably good reasons for me to use "race" and "ethnicity" like the organizations do, but I like "ancestry." So there.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 12:45 AM
There are public advocacy campaigns for different ethnic groups--I've seen them for Latinos and Asians, specifically.
"Ancestry" is an interesting word in that context. I'll have to think about it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 1:10 AM
I started to use ancestry (if not the word, the concept) for personal reasons, but some science-type people also in health kinds of contexts.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 1:37 AM
"also use it"
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 1:38 AM
If you want more medical ickiness, heparin -- one of the most common anti-coagulents given to people with thrombosis -- is produced from "porcine mucosa".
Beef heparin is sometimes used for people with allergies or food taboos. However, kosher laws are apparently not very strictly applied to life-saving medicines.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:06 AM
Man, I should totally sign up for that program. Being as that I am mixed-ancestry (I guess) and all.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 06-14-06 6:22 AM
I had a blood test today. The technician was seated when she put the needle in and then, with her hand still on it, she leaned to the side a bit; stood up; stepped around to the side; said, "it's really coming out slowly"; leaned forward; asked, "do your veins roll?"; heard me ask, "what do you mean by roll?"; said, "never mind, I got it"; and explained, while my blood finally came out, that sometimes people's veins "roll" away from the needle as soon as it's inserted.
I now have multiple marks on my arm. On the plus side, no appendicitis. Just four days of unexplained abdominal pains.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-19-06 1:11 AM