So a funny thing happened on the way to surgery last Monday. As they were prepping Mom to take her down to the 2nd floor for surgery, they needed to start an IV. There was a nurse intern on hand and they asked Mom if it would be OK if he started the IV for her, to which mom asked "Is he really good. Do you think he'll do a good job?" Well, I haven't met a nurse yet that would say something like "Heck no, I wouldn't even trust him to give my cat an enema," so she responded with something like "he's really good. It will be fine." The poor nurse intern was shaking and nervous, so we all excused ourselves before he started working with any live needles. Needless to say, that didn't turn out so well. Mom ended up with a golf ball sized bolus of blood pooling in her left forearm, and no IV.
What was even funnier, though, was that we then took her down to surgery where one of the more senior nurses gave her a poke in the other forearm in hopes of starting the IV, with the same result! A big ball of pooled blood immediately popped up. So we pulled in the big guns. The nurse anesthetist that was going to be putting mom under for the surgery was good enough to come and start the IV. Slick as slick.
Now, several days later, all those IV misses and other pokes for blood sampling have Mom looking like someone who belongs in a battered women's shelter. If you look close in the pictures, you can see the honking big bruises on her arms.
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