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Drawing Blood

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Looking Back on the First Time

As I recall, I was about ten years old when I first had to give a blood sample from the crook of my elbow. My mother drove me to Saint Luke’s Hospital close by the old Buckeye Road Hungarian neighborhood where we had lived until 1951. When I found out that a nurse wanted to stick a needle in my arm, I took the only reasonable course. I bolted down the corridor until a couple of orderlies deputed to drag me back got hold of me.

I thought it hurt like hell. And ever since, it has not been easy to draw my blood. The veins around my elbow run deep and are not terribly visible. The person drawing my blood has to be very experienced with patients who veins like to hide. There have been times when I was punctured three or four times before a big enough vein was found. Sometimes, they just stuck the needle in the back of my hand, where my veins are more prominent.

Saint Luke’s Hospital from an Old Postcard

The only thing that’s changed is that I no longer resist getting by needles. In fact, I have to administer an insulin shot into my abdomen or thigh four times a day. Even when there is some pain, I know that it won’t be long-lasting. It’s one of those things you get used to as you age.

Living With Type 2 Diabetes

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I Always Knew I Was Going to Become Diabetic

It seems that all the older people in my family were diabetic: my father, my mother, and even my great grandmother. Now even my younger brother is borderline.

Each day, I have to give myself three shots of Humalog (Lispro) and one shot of Lantus (Glargine). The Humalog shots all come before or immediately after meals, and the Lantus just before going to sleep. That’s not so bad, because both types of insulin use a KwikPen with an extremely skinny needle. I administer the insulin either in my gut or my thigh, with only occasionally a bad stick that hits a nerve.

What is worse are the finger sticks, which I have to do three times a day before meals. I have to poke a lancet into my fingertips and squeeze out a bead of blood so that I can tap it with a test strip connected to a device that reads the glucose level of my blood at that point. The problem is that I have trouble getting enough blood to give me a reading. Sometimes I have to poke the same fingertip as much as three times to draw enough blood.

As if that weren’t bad enough, some of my fingers (left thumb and right thumb) require a thicker lancet in order to get blood. My left forefinger has sustained some damage from all the finger sticking, so I usually skip it altogether. So I do a 9-finger rotation over a three-day period.

I don’t mind going with pen needle, nibs, and insulin to a restaurant, but I refuse to also prick my fingertips at the same meal. After all, the finger sticks are for measuring, whereas the insulin keeps my blood sugar low.

The good news is that what I’m doing is working for me. My last A1C reading was 6.5; and my finger stick readings tend to be in the low 100s.