Today's blog brought to you by the letters D and B and the number 1

So, today actually didn't start out too badly. I had a mountain of paperwork, but that's ok, I always do.

Let me tell you a little bit about my job, without telling too much. I work in Heath Care. I am a phlebtomist. For those of you who don't speak medical-ese, I take blood for diagnostic testing.

For the record, I have been doing this for 14 years. I am pretty good at my job.

This afternoon, I had a pretty busy spurt. A couple came into my office, I'll call them Mr and Mrs X. Mrs X was my patient. I have taken care of her before. She is ill, to say the least. This was the first time in 2010 I have seen her, but I saw her a bunch of times in 09. Since then, she has gone downhill. I don't know what her diagnosis is, and I wouldn't share it here, but she's not getting better.

Mr X had to help her get to my chair, and then he proceeded to stand in the way of all of my supplies, making my job a little bit difficult. He was holding her chin, because he said he didn't want her to hang her head.
Fine. I'll adjust. It's what I do.

Then the only arm I can use naturally doesn't have good veins. I manage to find one, and stick it, and of course, she begins moving her arm, and I lose the vein. The bloodflow slows and practically stops. The doctor orders a lot of testing too, of course. But I did get most of what he wanted. I didn't have enough for ONE test. Believe me, I was frustrated with myself.

Mr X, decides to start staying very nasty things to his wife, about me, and I am literally, 2 feet away from him. I can hear him. He is saying things like "well she sure stinks at her job" and "why would they hire someone that incompetent". My boss, calls the reference lab to see if what we have will be good enough. From the phone call, he doesn't think it will.

The husband is in the mean time, really starting to yell at me. Telling me to "get on with it" telling me "stick her again if you're going to" and in between all that again saying that "you should have known it wasn't going to work before you stuck her the first time" "don't they teach you that in school, don't stick the vein if it won't work" "don't you know how to do your job?" "why do you work here if you can't do your job" blah blah blah.

I said "Sir, I am doing the best I can, Mrs X, moved her arm while the needle was in the vein, and that made the needle go THROUGH the vein, there is not much I can do" He says "well obviously, sweetie, your best isn't good enough"

So I am flustered. I bit my tongue, HARD. And I tried to find another vein. I found a tiny possiblity.....I really didn't want to stick it, but I didn't want Mr X yelling in my face anymore either. So, I attempt to stick this vein. It did not work. Mr X then really loses his shit, and starts yelling that he is going to call the doctor and tell him how I "abused" his wife. Then he demands her paper work back, and says he is going to take her somewhere else. I very politely hand her paper back, and he tears it from my hands, and says "I better not be charged for ANYTHING. I don't want ANY of the testing done here, if they hire someone as stupid as you, the other people back there might be just as stupid, and I don't want anything else screwed up. You should be fired" Now this whole time, that Mr X is going off, his wife, who is very sweet, was defending me.

Now these are the things I wanted to say to Mr X, but didn't:

a) I am not stupid.
b) I am DAMN good at my job.
c) You are a douche bag.
d) It is not my fault that you had a bad day.
e) I was not trying to hurt your wife, and if you had listened to her at all, you would have heard her say "calm down, she's not hurting me"
f) My co workers are also not stupid. They both have bachelor's degrees in science--real science, like chemistry or biology, plus they had to go to another school, to get their licensing for the testing they do, every day. They are smarter than you, you fucking piece of shit.
g) If you ever come back to my office I will refuse to take care of you. Unless you are coming to apologize, and even then, I won't take care of you.
h) Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you, and here's a huge middle finger just for you, to tell you how number 1 I think you are.


Happy fucking asshole Monday.