Is it all "in Vein?"

Two weeks ago, we got to send the girls off to grandmas for a few days while I finished my exam stuff. The girls literally did not want to come back I mean literally, "z" cried to go back to grandma's when they dropped her off.
Whatever. They can go for a week if they want, I'll be in Paris.

Blood Week is over.
This is what my wife calls this week. It's called Blood Week because I ended up getting into the phlebotomy class which I couldn't get into almost to the day, one year ago. I guess after all of the people that got pissed from the enrollment process last time, they changed the process to make it more fair. This time you couldn't get in unless you were actually qualified and then it was a lottery system. Lucky me, my name came up just when I was already taking a speech class and a computer class at the college. This meant that the class which is 9-5, overlapped the last week of school. this meant that I had to talk my teachers into working around that last week of their class. This meant they wanted me to take all of my final exams A WEEK earlier then everyone else in the class!!! Not only that, I had to write at least three essays and when the phlebotomy class started The teacher is a total hard-ass who assigns; I kid you not, homework every class that's made up of at least 400 questions!!! It takes you an average of 8 hours to do these monsters. So, for two weeks I've been busting my ass doing papers, exams, speeches and homework.

The phlebotomy class itself is kinda cool so far. I never realised what a fucking dangerous job phlebotomy was. You're like one needle stick from about 80 diseases, 7 of which will kill you. It's like being a cop or a fireman. Somewhere out there is some punk with a gun, ready to plug you, and all you want to do is sit in your car and eat doughnuts. No wonder cops are always pulling over normal people They're afraid of pulling over that one kid with the gun. Shit, If I had a choice, I'd give shots only to virgins from Utah. But alas I'm sure when my clinic time comes up (in the last part of the class we actually get to work in a clinical setting) I'm sure they're going to give me some bass-ackwards clinical site, frequented by people who don't think they can get AIDS, because only white, gay guys get it.

The teacher, as I mentioned is a hard-ass but I can understand why. Do you really want a bunch of goof-offs sticking needles in your veins? "Oops! sorry, that was an artery!" Oops that was a nerve! I bet that smarts." "Third time's the charm!" By the way. No one is allowed to stick you more than twice when they are trying to take blood. After that, they should probably get someone else to do it if they keep fucking up. Another thing I've learned is that when a phlebotomist looks at which test you're getting done on your blood, they can usually figure out (at least the smart ones) what the doctor thinks is wrong with you. But don't ask them, they won't tell you.
The more I learn the angrier I get at all of the bad Injections and blood draws I've had. This one nurse who was drawing blood for a drug test at this horrible t-shirt job I had, couldn't find the vein and kept poking and adjusting, If they can't find the vein they should pull out, not wiggle it around as if trying to snag it with a coat hanger.
I've had some really good phlebotomist, you know the ones that you forgot that they had even poked you and then it's done. That's who I want to be. You remember those shot-docs just as much as that incompetent boob, who whips the the needle around like a porn star's dick.

The people in the class all complain about the homework. The teacher just laughs, she's heard all of this before. She been in the biz for 30 years. As hard as it is for me to get it done. At least I live close to the school. The rest seem to live in Dirt Road California and have to drive an hour to get there. Can you imagine, You drive two hours in one day, take a 9-5 class and then have to do 8 hours of homework? All week long I was staying up to 3 AM! The bags under my eyes made me think I had grown a pair of testicle on my face. It took me back to week three of my girls baby days. Ahhh, week three. We were so tired, I prayed for. Death said: "Fuck you, I'm not working at 3 AM."

This one guy in class actually took a phlebotomy class before but didn't finish it because of some moving thing or another. He said that this one is definitely harder which scares me. If there are people that took a back-of-a-comic-book style class, practicing a job where if you don't know what you're doing, someone dies, that's a scary thought. I'm hoping that if I can get my foot in the hospital door, I can be trained to do the lab part of phlebotomy. At least then, instead of getting stuck with an AIDS needle by mistake, I'll only have to worry about loading a centrifuge wrong, sending valves of Ebola infected shit samples everywhere.

That's better, right?

EM