"Not the experience I expected"

Feeling so sore and raw another another botched venesection.

Seems I am not the only one enjoying special ACU venesection treatment, but that's little comfort.

This has been going on for months and months. Never gets any better.

How hard is it to extract a pint of blood, safely? Nearly impossible i feel - unit has run out of the correct IV bags, no tape, missing gauze, wrong needles. Someone rushes around the oncology/chemo unit to find some basic supplies and then the most junior member of staff on the unit gets the plum job of trying (and repeatedly failing) to install a cannula correctly. Was this a training exercise, who knows?

No luck getting it working after 2 failed needle attempts, so resident nurse expert is sent for. Time for a walk round the car park whilst waiting.

Another 3 attempts and finally it's working.

Predictably, then get left unattended after a while and sure enough the line blocks after 10 mins; takes 15 mins for anyone to notice.

So....now we try wiggling the cannula (ouch! ) a bit to no effect, change the barely used IV bag (that'll be why there aren't any on the unit), hunt for another IV bag (luckily one discovered at the back of a cupboard somewhere on the haematology unit down the corridor) and off we go again. And again. And again.

Nice to see the new call bell system, does it work? Much better than the little hand bells that people told you to ring when you were collapsing/passing out (but which seemed to grow legs or got tracked down and placed well out of reach).

Finally, after some confusion about the amount of blood extracted across 3 IV bags, we are done. And I am totally exhausted, aching and sore. It's taken almost 4 hours for a procedure that should take 20-30 minutes. To cap it off, the hospital car park charges extra after 3. 5hours so I get stung for £4. 20 before I can actually leave the building.

I have months and months more of this to look forward to. Not sure I can do this anymore.