Saturday, June 28, 2014

Blood Vessels

Doctor Choo could not draw any blood from my good hand. The main vessels were blocked. Chemotherapy does that to your veins. Its the chemical reaction, I was told. I was there for my annual blood test.

"You mean blood is no longer flowing through these veins?"

"Don't worry. They'll flow through the other capillaries. You have lots of those." 

He can't draw blood from my bad hand. (That's the side where the mastectomy happened.) It had something to do with the lymph nodes which were surgically removed, thereby affecting the drainage system. So, we had a problem.

I offered my leg.

He laughed. It was unprecedented in medical history but why not? Why not, indeed. I was asked to lie down. He found a vessel on my right foot and drew the blood from there.

"We're going to go down in history," said the good doc. "We should be in the Guinness Book of Record. This is the first time blood is drawn from a foot for a blood test."

"Really?"

"Actually, its been done before, for patients who went into shock. Usually, we cut up the vessel."

Ya, right!

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