Friday, May 04, 2007

Spilled...

Blood.

Yes you read that correctly not spilled milk... but blood. Yesterday I drew my blood and dutifully took it to my ob's office and handed it to the lab lady and said this is for the second part of the whatever screen. We put my name on it and off it went to wherever it is that it needed to go to. I think a) the lady was a bit miffed I drew my own blood and b) was irritated that I drew my own blood but what the hell do I know.

A few minutes ago I received a call from my doctor's office. Mind you I sent 2 vials of blood - a red and a gold top tube. Somehow in transit the top of the tube came off. I do not know if both tops came off, but one did. I'm on the phone right now trying to find out if both tops came off... I'm curious now. Primarily because they managed to survive a trip of an hour without anything happening to them, yet once I handed them off they suddenly became a ticking time bomb that was just waiting to explode. I am making the nurse call back the lab and ask about the other tube... because it seems highly unlikely that both tops came off. Just a freak occurrence and while I'm known for my freak occurrences specimen tubes are not. Make sense?

I think the nurse was a bit put out that I wanted to know about the second specimen tube. I even offered to call myself that it was curiousity that was getting the best of me on this one and just wanted to know. But again - what the hell do I know? I'm only a nurse and have only had the top come off a few times... and we take the tops off those vacutainers quite frequently in the peds unit as sometimes we have to do it by drip rather than by a syringe to get blood. Apparently they got me on a pissy day. As normally I would have just taken this news and said- so sad have to have another blood draw. I'm a concrete kind of gal - I want facts. If we sent 2 specimen tubes what is the likelihood that both specimen tubes would pop open during transit? Slim is my thoughts... so we shall see what the good nurse has to say.

Nurse called back - they never sent the second tube... Gee thanks. All of this would have been avoided if they had sent both tubes.

3 comments:

Plant Girl said...

So did she have a good explanation as to why the second tube wasn't sent??

DinosaurD said...

All I can say is "yikes" - and the rest of us complain about having to give ourselves subcut injections. Drawing your own blood? Get out of here girl.
DinoD

Kristin, Rod, and Victoria said...

Only you, Sami, only you!

BTW - the first line made me hold my breath and panic briefly. In an odd way, I'm glad that it was vials of your blood being spilled and not blood directly out of your body.