Plug-fie

Your veins are really tiny. Next time before you come, maybe you should go and sweep the floor first or something.

The nurses at NCC are actually pretty good at what they do. Maybe because they understand that the patients that are coming to them are all in some form of pain. I have never had the problem of them not being able to find my veins, nor bruising or scarring after.

Everywhere else though, it’s a pretty different story. I’ve met a nurse that went to take a hot pack and placed it on my hands, another that tied three tourniquets around my arm. Even after lamenting at me about how all this is supposedly my fault, they would then poke the needle in, wiggle it all around and still not get a backflow.

Recently a doctor I met topped it all. He couldn’t find any of my veins despite slapping my hand about a thousand times.

“Come with me. We need to go to another room,”.

Maybe he was going to get his colleague.

“Can you please lie down on the bed,” he asked, before proceeding to power up the ultrasound machine and squirting the gel on my hand.

Moving the probe round and round and round, and squirting even more gel, he finally managed to set the line.

Not only was it really slanted and about to fall off, it caused me to scar and bruise when the line was eventually removed.

Slanted plug that was set using an ultrasound machine

 

Yes, I’m totally judging.

 

PS: I needed them to set a line so that they could give me the radioactive tracer and the contrast dye for the CT-PET scan. The results from the scan were okay I guess. Stable.

One thought on “Plug-fie

  1. Hey Kim, came across your blog only after I came across your profile on FB. Just want to say that you are so brave and will be in my prayers. My grandma had colorectal cancer in 2014 and is in remission now, so I can relate to the difficulty in a tiny way. Jia you, hugz! See you on Sat ^^

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