IV Breakdown

If my life was based on my all-time favorite television series, Friends, this episode would be called, “the one with the IV breakdown”. Instead of a coffee shop, the scene would open on the usual clinical practice suite, and the usual mixed group of 6 students (including me) preparing to practice putting in an IV line on each other, under nurse supervision. It would quickly become clear to our group that we were not blessed with good practice veins among us. One guy was a body builder and though his veins were large, they had many valves, and often would sort of disappear even after you inserted the needle and got blood from them.  Another student had virtually indistinguishable veins from her skin, and it was near impossible to find a vein that was usable for a beginner’s IV access. And, as for me, after 2 sticks my pain sensors activated my migraines and I teared up and got dizzy and said I could no longer be stuck, as, unfortunately for my classmates sake, IV insertion hurt a lot more then blood drawing, and I was just not feeling good that day. For our group, this literally meant that one student had to basically became the group pincushion.

By the time it was my turn to go, I knew I had no choice but to use our one student, as I was last and by then we had determined no one else was plausible. However, by then, he had already be stuck a good 6/7 times by others as no one was able to get an IV on the first try and often the IV plastic part bent inside the hand/vein of the patient being stuck.

Before it was my turn to go, the nurse in the room said, “you have seen everyone else go, you will be perfect right? Then we can just leave”…Hoping she was right, and knowing in my heart that my procedural skills were never going to be the “see one, do one” perfectly kind…I went for it. Even though I got a blood flash, somehow I messed up on pushing the plastic part forward and therefore, I messed up my first try. This set off a fury in my nurses head.

“You have to get this next try or I can’t sign off on you and you can’t pass this course.”  (WAIT. Did she just tell me I was going to fail?….You can’t say FAIL to a med student…that’s basically a curse word.)

“He only has one vein left, look at this poor guy”, she then said. (Oh good, I thought, make me feel EVEN worse that I am going last on the guy who volunteered to continue to serve as our dummy because he was a former phlebotomist. Plus, I’ve only stuck him once so far, and the person before me went 6 times on him. Give me a chance. )

Meanwhile, my friend on the table (the dummy) was saying back to her, “I have leg veins too”. “I was a phlebotomist on kids”. “What is one more stick?”. “Just Let her finish!” Likely, he could tell this woman’s intensity was not going to help me be successful. That, or he could see the steam coming out of my ears and the tears welling up in my eyes.

“Seriously though”, the nurse replied, “you have to get this or you will have to come back tomorrow or something. You definitely can’t go on the wards until you pass this.” (WAIT, Did she just threaten me?).

Shit. !#@$^#$%&% I messed up again. How did I do that? I saw blood and everything? (She messed me up half way through and paused me. Just like when they made me stop before parking on my driving test when I was 16 and then made me turn in to park. NO MOMENTUM. OF COURSE I HIT THE DAMNED CONE.)

(Oh no…Now I am crying)

As the tears welled up in my eyes and then streamed down my face, it was as if I sounded a silent alarm and the other 6 nurses and clinical administrator waiting (and wondering what was taking us so long) came rushing into the room. All I could see were lots of people talking, and all I could do was, look at my friend with all his bandages, then look at them, and yell, “I did NOT do that to him. I ONLY WENT TWICE.” (as the tears just kept streaming down my face).

The administrator came up to me in the hallway and asked me what I wanted to do and whether I wanted to come back the next day to finish. To this, I quickly replied with a slightly nicer version of “HELL TO THE NO”. I wanted to get it done and I wanted all of the people out of my room and out of my way. She told me to wash my face, and she left me with the ballsy, no-holds-bar nurse from my blood draw day to get me in and out.

Ultimately, with the nurse walking me through to the end, I finally got through the IV day….but all I could think about was how I cried in front of all the nurses and what a fool out of myself I had made. I am sure not feeling well had something to do with it, but so did the fact that I was supposed to be learning and the nurse threatened to fail me, which has never happened on any of my learning sessions.

As I was leaving one of the nurses said to me, “What specialty do you think you are going to go into???!?”

I responded….”Something non-procedural I’ll tell you that”…

And, all of them laughed. Loudly.

At least humor is a mature defense mechanism.