Running towards something…

I wonder if someone out there can tell me the rules as to when a phlebotomist is doing their thing at what point they should put on gloves?

I’ll start by saying perhaps I have a skewed view on this, or maybe it’s just that I go to a super professional tattoo/piercing shop.  I’ve been to this place several times and I would say during the prep phase alone, each artist has changed their gloves at least 5-6 times.  They put on new gloves every time they go to touch an instrument, bottle of ink, tape, etc etc.  Oh, and lest we forget, they wash their hands for a good few minutes before starting it all too - by the time they put the needle to the skin, I’m pretty sure they’ve cleaned through a few layers of their own.

So,  this image of a tattoo parlor remains in my head every time I go to the doctor’s office and have to get blood drawn because I expect that if a tattoo parlor is THAT anal about cleanliness, a doctor’s office should be too - right?

Let me tell you how things went down today:

So I sat in the little chair thingie and I explained to the phlebotomist that I have had blood drawn several times and know the odds are higher from the veins in my hands than they are from my elbow-pits.  (When I was in the hospital for the blood clot they drew blood every 6 hours, for 4 days straight.  I think I know a thing or two about my veins.) She begins to prepare things - needle, blood catcher, gauze, alcohol, band-aid - all without the use of gloves.

She puts on the gloves, grabs the tourniquet and ties off midway down my left arm.  She starts to feel around for a few minutes and then I hear a snap - she has purposely ripped off part of the glove at tip of her index finger.  (insert quizzical look here)  Not convinced that there’s a good vein on my left hand she moves to my right.  She finds a vein, takes the alcohol pad and wipes the area off (with her half gloved, half not hand) and sticks.  It hurts.  Abnormally so.  Instead of continuing, she stops because, “you’re swelling”.  When she pulls the needle out, more blood than I have ever seen in a routine blood test spits out.  She puts the gauze AND the alcohol pad on the spot, asks me to hold it down, and throws a band-aid over it.

She then asks if she can see my arms anyhow and I show her where one person had relative success with a vein.  She goes for that one - nothing comes out.

Thankfully, another phlebotomist walked in the room around that time and my tech asked if she could give it a try.  The first failed vampire lady with the exposed finger set everything up for the second phlebotomist and then walked away.  While I was left alone in the room for a minute I contemplated asking her what the rules were with regards to gloves.  I wondered if there was any way I could tell her about miss no-gloved pointer without her hearing…

The new tech walks in and I explain my hand veins again and she looks at my left hand and thinks she knows where to stick.  She ties off my hand at the wrist (weird), and then proceeds to do the blood test WITHOUT ANY GLOVES AT ALL. 

I was in a debate on if I should speak up or if I was just being paranoid but again- if a tattoo parlor is so concerned about keeping clean, shouldn’t a doctor’s office have a higher standard or at the very least the SAME standard??

For the record, I never saw either one of the phlebotomists wash their hands.

An old acquaintance of mine emailed me yesterday to catch up on things.  A good ol’ Hey. How are you? What’s new in your world? sort of thing.  Not wanting to divulge a ton of information (hell, half of it is out here on the ‘net, right?) I kept things to a minimum but noticed baiting sentences from their end.  Things like I can’t even begin to sum up how the past year has been and So much has happened…  I finally suggested they just pick a subject and go with it.  One of the first tidbits they decided to share was they recently got engaged.

Now, this news in itself didn’t get me thinking - quite honestly, I expected that’s why I was getting the sudden what’s up email in the first place.  No.  What got me thinking was that they decided to send this email from an account other than one they use on a daily basis.  Why?  Basically to just avoid the drama that might ensure if said person was “caught” talking to me by their new fiance.

And that’s about the point where I started to laugh.  How can two people start a life together when they can’t even be honest about who they are talking to? 

Now, before you start introducing me to the black kettle, I know some of you who knew me during the whole 5-year thing are thinking about how I was quite possibly one of the most jealous people on earth and I probably would have been livid if I had found my ex talking to another person (former friend, ex, whatever) while we were together - but I had reason to doubt him.  Our relationship was never built on trust and I know that is a horrible thing to say but believe me when I say it was even more horrible to live it.  Said ex was never one for divulging more than he had to and this broke us up more than once - and those instances were only the times I actually caught him in a lie… who knows what else happened behind his closed doors.

But back to this random email… I only know my former acquaintance - I have no idea who they are engaged to or what they know of me because it would have been up to said acquaintance to dish.  So, who is it this email person doesn’t trust?  Their new fiance, or themselves?

….I’d like to say remind me to never be that person who is stuck in an distrusting situation, but you know what?  I never will be.  Not again.

My best friend’s mother is having some serious medical issues that can be summed by saying she had emergency surgery over the weekend and she’s currently in ICU.

Some prayers sent to the east coast of central Florida would mean a whole lot to them, and me.  When I talked to him, my friend, earlier he said he was holding up well and wasn’t crying.  I told him not to worry - I had that covered for him.

My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.

I don’t know about anyone else, but that’s how I remember the 9 planets.  Except, I just found out, via CNN, that there are now 11 planets.

11 planets!

And to top it all off, I thought we lost Pluto a couple years ago?  Didn’t something happen to it that it imploded or something?? 

This needs to be the next thing I Wikipedia when I’m in a lull.

Oh, and here’s the CNN article about the 11 planets: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/27/planets.mnemonic.ap/index.html

No, my feet didn’t turn purple in the hubub, but they certainly could use a rest (I just wanted to show off my shoes - they scream to be worn with fishnets, don’t they?)  As could the rest of my body, quite honestly.  It fits in perfectly with the horoscope on my calendar today that suggests I “eat healthy and get to bed early”. 

As for the eating healthy bit, today I weighed in for The Biggest Loser, (bignamecompany) Style.  From today until the beginning of June, I weigh in once a week and compete for the grand prize: 75% of the entrance fees.  Or at the very least, runner up gets 25% of the fees.  Of course because I should be starting my eating healthy kick, I’m currently sporting a grumbly tummy.  I’m sure it doesn’t help that I ate like absolute shit the entire weekend because I had a house guest and we ate wherever we wanted to.

ANYHOW, my birthday was fantastic!  Lots of people showed up for Karaoke where I was summoned to drink a shot of Jager out of an inflatable sheep’s tushie.  I also sang my typical Britney, and butchered Dusty Springfield.   Ginny not only got to see snow on the ground, she got to see snow fall, make a snowman (a mini one) and have an impromptu snowball fight.

We went to see the movie Penelope, walked around the loop, and went to the Art Institute.  I fell in love with a piece by Auguste Rodin I seemed to have missed in all my other trips to the Art Institute.   It’s called, Eve After the Fall.

That’s only a portion of her… but I think it’s beautiful.

Birthday dinner was Saturday night and the restaurant was amaaaaaazing!  I chose it on a whim from Open Table and I must say I lucked out!  The food was fantastic and I had the best couple glasses of Pinot Noir EVER. 

Sunday I turned into the wicked bitch of the northside, but luckily Ginny said she was equally as tired as I, so we stayed out for a while, went home to nap, then went out for dinner.  We kept debating on visiting other parts of the city but neither one of us could come up with a good enough reason to go anywhere else.

I’ve super-condensed this story, but the whole point of it all was that I had a great birthday, a great weekend with my friend, and I will have the best night of sleep of my life tonight because I’ve been up since 4am and I could totally nap right this second - but I won’t.