So the head man, Brian always had funny stories when he came to class. I'm really not sure how much of it was entirely true, but they were always entertaining.

One older man would always have to come in to have blood work done. This veteran had one major problem though: he tended to sexually harass the female phlebotomists. Apparently the man had very long arms, and when the women would go to draw him he'd be able to... reach them from where he was sitting. Brian received numerous complaints about this individual, but was unsure of how to give an old veteran the boot diplomatically. As it so happened, this groper had another strange characteristic- instead of using toilet paper like most people do when using the restroom, he would insist on using baby wipes. On one particular occasion he ran out of his wipes and requested some more. This gave Brian an idea. He gave him wipes, but not the kind used for the restroom. Instead, the vet received cleaning wipes used for cleaning counters and sinks- the kind with chlorine disinfectant instead of soft alcohols.

This gave Mr. Vet a severe reaction on his hind-quarters. He had no idea why these wipes were causing so much trouble. Being at a medical facility he requested that he be given something to make the itching go away.

Brian: "Tell you what, I'll give you something for the problem on one condition."

"What's that?"

"You have to stop touching my female phlebotomists inappropriately."

"Psh. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Right. I bet you one box of chlorine disinfectant wipes that you do."

"You son of a gun!"

Afterwards the man kept his hands to himself.

On another note, Brian firmly believes in the existence of Bigfoot. To make a long story short, he and his friend were out camping one night. Something with a huge, heavy, irregular breathing pattern made it's through their camp in the dead of night, and scared them so badly that they spent the rest of the night spooning for fear of its return.

Yes, some of his stories had absolutely nothing to do with anything.

Another one of his duties as a well-trained phlebotomists is to take and analyze blood and urine samples, which led him to this story:

Part of the screening process for applicants to the place Brian worked required a drug panel be done before being hired. These people know what is going on and willingly submit themselves to it.

It had been a normal screening so far with nothing out of the ordinary. He was almost finished with a young woman and just needed to do a couple urine tests. She gives him a full cup and dips in the cocaine identifier. If comes out positive. 

"Have you used cocaine??"

"No! That's ridiculous!"

So they retested that sample. Then after denying again had her fill another to which they received the same result. After that she confessed to "being at a party last night," and that the reason it was in her was because "others were doing it, and she must have got 2nd-hand cocaine in her blood."

Obviously she doesn't understand that coke isn't really something you smoke... it has to be ingested... Unfortunately for her she pretty much caught herself and had to be reported to the authorities.

A friend from one of the labs in town called while we were in class asking if Brian wanted to take us to tour the facility. His reply, "hell yeah."

Another duty of his is to travel around to others' homes and collect samples. This time he found that it was old woman and a urine sample was required, but unfortunately the collectors have to watch the sample as it's collected to ensure it's not tampered with. Usually a female collector does this and Brian volunteered to have someone else come back later to which she replied, "I'm 80 years old. I don't care. Let's just get it over with." And produced his sample.

Apparently he's seen quite a few things that keep him up at night.

Day 1- Classmate Introductions

So the first night some fairly amazing things were said. To start off they had everyone come up and introduce themselves and tell a little personal info.

In describing what phlebotomy is like, the teacher told us that it has some really cool perks. One of these times is getting to tell the patient the results of a positive pregnancy test. "Sometimes the patient is excited." Did you like the qualifier there? I sure did.
One girl got up and stated "I hate needles and blood. Time to get over my fears."
Another guy described that he was going into radiological sciences. The teacher asked if he had any kids and when he said no she said "that's probably a good thing you have no kids if you're going into radiology." She just meant that there are some serious time constraints, but it came out waaaayyyy different.
One lady, I kid you not, said this line out of the blue as she was giving her intro, "So my girlfriend called me up and asked if I wanted to take this phlebotomy class. And I asked myself, do I take this class and better myself or stay in county jail?" Apparently phlebotomy was the lesser of two evils.
Another woman was interesting (sorry, not funny) and admitted that she liked reading medical journals in her spare time and wanted to become a cardiovascular surgeon. Of course this gal also stopped showing up so maybe it wasn't worth it?
Lastly there was the teacher herself who was just kind of funny cuz she was a little ditsy. Her funniest story was talking about the crap patients make licensed nurses deal with, and how during a particularly unpleasant hospital stay she even made life hard for nurse too. The nurse had asked her to collect a urine sample but hadn't been back to collect it. Her "need assistance" light had been on for just a bit too long and she was really frustrated, so much so that when the nurse finally came back she chucked her collection at the attendee getting it all over.
Was almost as funny as when she described another story describing how phlebotomists are not responsible for cleaning up after patients. Apparently another patient had been waiting on a nurse just a little too long to use the restroom, and when the teacher went in randomly to draw this patient's blood she found the patient had taken a dump on the floor. She promptly turned on heel and let the nurses at the station know that the patient needed them.
"Why?"
"Because the patient has a problem."
"What type of problem?"
"They went to the bathroom on the floor."
"Then clean it up!"
"That's not my job!"

Intro- About the Headmaster

Now phlebot stories are going here!

Ok, so after sharing some of the things I've heard in my phlebotomy class, Britt thinks I should blog about my experiences in this class. She laughed pretty good so hopefully you enjoy it too.
For starters, there is the man who oversees the program. He's an interesting guy and has a funny story about his own induction into phlebotomy.
At first Brian was phobic about needles and blood. He would try his hardest to avoid them and would literally pass out at the sight of a needle. Then after a friend asked him if he wanted to come train to be a phlebotomist he decided it was time to conquer that fear. So his friend put him through a little exposure therapy.
Every day this friend would tie him down to a chair using motorcycle straps and come into the room carrying a needle. Each day they'd see how close they could get to Brian before he'd pass out. Finally after about 10 days the friend was able to wave the needle around in his face, and just a few days after that he was able to poke other people with a needle of his own and start drawing blood.
But things didn't go so smoothly at first. Once at the hospital Friend waves Brian over saying he's got one over here for him. Brian enters the room and Friend... leaves. The 97 year old woman that he is left alone with then strips down giving him an image he never will forget and he proceeds to awkwardly draw her blood.
While doing this he kept noting that the blood wasn't coming out very quickly, and only after filling a few viles with blood realizes that on the underside of her arm the blood has been pooling underneath the skin due to a bad stick, leaving her a "baseball-sized hematoma" (fluid-filled sac). Frantically he waves Friend over and they disperse it as best they can.
Later the next day the woman comes back and has a bruise starting at her wrist going up her arm, around the back of her shoulder and coming down her chest from all the blood that seeped out underneath the skin. He recalls her complaining "You s.o.b.'s almost killed me!"
Apparently training and drawing standards were quite a bit lower 20-30 years ago.