Memoirs of a Lab Rat

Yesterday was the big day. I began my Avonex injections. I am here to tell about it, so I think it safe to say, it went pretty well. Since my last blog entry, I agreed to be in another MS research program. The new one is about MS and proteins or something or another that really makes no sense to me, so I won't even try to explain it. All I know is that it required me to have a bit more blood drawn while I was playing lab rat.

Once again I am sporting not one, but two blown out veins in my arm. My veins simply do not like the invasion of an IV. If all you want to do is draw blood, my veins cooperate just fine. But try and stick an IV in them and they start to play hide & seek. We eventually had success, only to have it shattered by 8:10. Since they were going to draw more blood for the research studies, they decided to leave an IV in to make drawing the blood less difficult. Translate...They SERIOUSLY thought they were saving me pain by putting in an IV for the blood draws because I was going to have blood drawn around 5:00, another at 7:20 another at 8:10 and one more the following morning at 7:30. If you add them up, that is four sticks of the needle to draw blood. I told them from the beginning that I didn't mind needles for drawing blood, but they insisted it would be much easier with the IV.

Easier for whom? Let's do the math! If you count all the sticks above, that is four sticks of a needle to draw blood. Hmmm, let's see...It took three stick attempts and some serious digging around under the skin for them to get the IV in. Then, they still had to take it out last night after the last blood draw because it was malfunctioning. This morning, it took two more sticks to get a good vein going for the blood draw because they had already completely used up my right arm trying to make an IV work. That makes FIVE STICKS. So, if they had just taken the blood with a needle as needed, I would have had four punctures. But because they were trying to make it easier, I got stuck FIVE times (six if you count jabbing a needle into my own leg, but we won't count that one since it is not about the blood letting.) Hey you guys, thanks for looking out for me! Next time, listen to me. And to think, they gave MEEEE a math test!

TO BE CONTINUED....