Or as I like to say: “The day I felt like I was going to die giving blood”.
It started out innocently enough yesterday morning as I went in for my “fasting labs” at 9:45. I arrived on time and took my seat with the other cattle waiting for my turn. At least this visit was “free” but isn’t it weird that we pay for medical services BEFORE we get them? I can’t imagine paying for my diner before I get it but for some reason insurance and co-pays and address changes and your debit card is the most important thing required for the privilege of seeing a doctor.
Twenty minutes later they call my name and the nurse who would very soon try and kill me greeted me in the lobby. She apologized for the wait and said that the next time I come in if I have labs I should only be sitting five minutes and to let someone know. I had my iPhone, so I really didn’t mind the wait.
She proceeded to take me to a chair covered in sea green vinyl and told me to take a seat and she would be with me shortly.
I surveyed the empty tubes and alcohol prep wipes, the centrifuge next to the little stainless steel door that passed into the bathroom, the little sink and fridge with the bio hazard sticker and piece of paper stating that no consumables should be left inside. There were magnets with drug names, soap dispensers with drug names, drugs with drug names, even the scale had drug names. It looked like the room had been decked out by NASCAR, I half expected my doctor to come out in a fire retardant suit with the Pfizer logo and bulging pants.
After watching a lady get weighed, overhearing a conversation about how a certain patient was a hypochondriac, a nurse trying to tell another nurse from Chesapeake General about a RNT or RMT or PMR or something for five minutes I was ready to get my labs over with. I kept looking at the little door with the beaker half full of liquid stamped into it thinking how nice it would be if I could pee. I had been holding it for a while and I desperately wanted to fill a couple cups for them right about now.
My nurse that would soon kill me finally came over and apologized again for the wait. I told her I was fine and she proceeded to pull my arm hair out with a blue rubber band she stretched over my elbow. She grabbed a drug company labeled squishy thing and had me pump it as she looked for a vein. I told her they were shy and since I grew up in the North they had learned to retreat from the cold. She was from New Jersey. I was glad to know that, because very soon I would be dead and being killed by someone from New Jersey is much more believable than someone from Des Moines.
She decided to try my left arm and ripping out more hair she switched the blue rubber band over there. More pumping of the gray squishy drug labled thing and I felt the pinch of the needle and asked her if I should keep squeezing. She said I could stop.
Apparently when she said I could stop my body heard I could die.
The next thing I know I am in a conversation with 50 people and I am literally buzzing back and forth in my head like a ping pong ball. As I start to regain consciousness I am acutely aware of the fact that I can’t wake up and the more I try to get out of the static the harder it is. A couple seconds pass in this state but it felt like forever. It was like my brain was being shaken and I was in the middle trying to make sense of the jumbled images.
Eventually I opened my eyes and noticed four nurses and my doctor asking me if I knew my name.
Dave…
Whaaat happen…
“Do you know where you are?”
No (I did kind of know where I was but no was easier to say)
Whaat is wrong wiitth mee?
“You had a vasovagal syncope response” said my doctor. “put his head down between his legs”
I feel sick
At this point I start dry heaving uncontrollably and sweating. The sweat in pouring off of me, literally dripping from every pore of my body, and I am puking and feel like I am going to fall over at any second.
This goes on for a minute and they push some god awful burning drug into my shoulder to stop the nausea.
I am still sweating but the puking has slowed down. I feel like crud and can’t open my eyes and start to whimper a bit. I may have cried. I may have been really scared that whatever was going on would never stop and I was going to die right there in that sea green chair next to the bathroom I wanted to pee in.
They took my blood pressure with this cool wrist cuff, pricked my finger and checked my blood sugar. My pressure was low, sugar fine, and I just had to wait it out till it passed enough for me to make it to a room.
Five minutes later I was recovered enough to move.
I was a mess. The floor had a puddle of sweat between my feet that had fallen from my head, I was literally dripping from head to foot.
I was able to make it to the exam room and laid down on the table. The paper cloth was no match for my sweaty back and it disintegrated as I lay there. Eventually I stopped sweating and they gave me some grape juice and a handful of crackers. My doctor and his assistant came in and checked me out and made some comment about how it is always the big guys that are sensitive. He told my wife who had arrived a few minutes later that she married a sensitive guy.
She knows.
Apparently I went out after the second vile was full of blood and the nurse said I started snoring. I told her I had sleep apnea so she should have let me sleep, it was the most I had had all week. 🙂 I think it scared her, it definitely scared me, and she suggested I tell the next nurse who draws blood that this happened to me.
Um…. pretty sure if this is going to happen to me again I will never have my blood drawn.
Ever.