So, I went this morning to get blood drawn. Nothing major, just some routine metabolic tests.

I always hate getting blood drawn. It's not that I'm afraid of needles. It's just that medical technicians always have an incredibly hard time finding my veins. When I used to go to university health services, the poor young technician would poke and prod my arm in puzzlement for a while, and then go find the one experienced nurse in the clinical lab who somehow knew just where to put the needle in.

But now I have new health insurance, a new doctor, a new clinical lab. I go to the new lab this morning, and everything goes well at first -- they can actually see me right away, instead of making me cool my heels in the waiting room.

The technician has me sit in a chair, and ties the little rubber band thing around my arm just above the elbow, and pokes a few times with gloved fingers at the spot in the crook of my arm where the vein should come up. He looks at me in complete astonishment. "No vein."

He pokes a couple more times. "You've had blood drawn before?" he asks.

"Sure."

"From where?"

I point to the spot he's been poking. He shakes his head in disbelief. He tries the other arm. He doesn't fare any better there. He switches back to my right arm. Poke. Poke. Nothing. He picks up my arm, and traces along the faint blue vein that is visible under the skin of my lower forearm, up to where it vanishes a couple of inches below my elbow. I can practically hear him thinking: "Where does it *go*?"

This is the point where if this were university health services, the older experienced nurse would be summoned, and all would be well. I realize at this point that there is no experienced older nurse -- this guy is it. He's going to have to figure out how to get my blood, or no one will.

At that moment, I consider calling the whole thing off.

"All right," the technician announces, "we take from back of hand."

He wraps the rubber band thingie around my right wrist, and has me flex my hand open and shut repeatedly. The little vein over the lowest knuckle of my pinkie finger pops up. He points proudly. "See. Vein."

This observation seems to restore his confidence immensely. I'm just aghast at the idea of him sticking a needle into my *knuckle*, so I look away and start reading the medical flyers stuck on the wall. To my relief, he swabs down the back of my hand, not my knuckle, and inserts the needle there.

After that, everything goes smoothly. Three little vials are filled, and the needle comes out, and he sticks a cotton ball to the back of my hand with a strip of tape.

He shakes his head at me. "You have very hard veins." I think he means that they're difficult to find, not that the veins are actually hard. (English clearly isn't his first language; he speaks it fairly well, but not idiomatically.) He takes the little tubes and walks out.

And that is why I don't much like getting blood drawn.