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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.

Discharged

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I Was Expecting Something Much More Demanding

If you’ll remember, I was hospitalized in November for two days and a night at UCLA’s Ronald Reagan Medical Center for losing consciousness in the bathroom in the middle of the night—either from a lack of adrenaline (my pituitary was removed years ago) or low blood pressure. If not, you can read about it in my post entitled “I Dodge a Bullet.”

Although I had been hospitalized for roughly similar reasons three times before, this time I also had an ugly hematoma on my left forehead and a broken eleventh rib.

Apparently, this qualified me for a higher level of care than previously. Also, I am now 78 years old; and the good doctors probably thought I was a shut-in. So I had eight weeks of visits from a nurse, occupational therapist, physical therapist, and even a social worker. The last official visit was today from the physical therapist, a stunningly beautiful young woman from Ecuador.

Back when I was in high school, my mother worked at a Cleveland hospital for the terminally ill. During the summers, I volunteered in the hospital’s physical therapy department—not working with patients, but mainly inventorying and storing the materials used by the therapists. Most of the department’s patients were paraplegics and hemiplegics.

Three times before, I had benefited from physical therapists who had worked with me when I had a hip replacement in 2002 and two separate broken shoulders, one from a fall in Argentina and another (on the other shoulder) closer to home. As a result, I have always respected the profession.

The home visits from the therapist sent by UCLA were likewise helpful to me. The balls of my feet have for several years been tingling from diabetic neuropathy. The exercises the therapist had me do were relatively simple, but have mitigated the neuropathy to some extent. That’s good, because I remember one of my former physicians had the same problem and had to retire when they had to amputate his feet, which exhibited a severe case of neuropathy.

So I have now been discharged from the home visits, which have been extremely helpful in transitioning me to what is to come.