Opinion: Is there someone with a little more experience who could draw my blood?
An Op-Ed by Marine Staff Sgt. Frank Juarez, while awaiting his bi-annual HIV blood draw.
Listen, HN3 Jones. I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but I can see your hands are shaking a bit as you’re preparing that needle and supplies to draw my blood. How about you take a deep breath or two and just relax for a minute. I know that you spent months training to do this and it will be fine.
Oh, not months? Phlebotomy is just a two-day course? You just checked in from the schoolhouse too, eh? I see.
All folks deserve a chance to learn their job through hands-on work, and I wish you all the best in your career, I do. However, the last time I came in, a fellow HN3 of yours stabbed the needle through my vein and into my bone.
The experience left me vomiting in pain on the floor.
The time before that, I was trying to donate blood for the clinic’s drive for our deployed warriors. I’m O-Negative, which you are in desperate need of, so despite my misgivings based on past experience, I came i…
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