Bleed....Please!

As I clumsily plunge the needle even deeper, and even more hopelessly into the patient's arm, I grit my teeth and pray for red gold. Taking blood is all well and good when the guy on the end of the needle is fit, healthy, one of your mates, and is actually talking you through it. But patients are another deal. For the most part, they're old, thin, and have had more injections than Pete Doherty. All these things make it nearly impossible to find a vein, and to get a needle in it. Not that my patient seemed to care though, he just lies back in his semi-conscious state and bears the ineptitude of it all. I'm lucky in the fact that I have quite thick skin (figuratively) so I can take messing it up a few times in my stride. I'll get there in the end.
That was the end to my hospital day today. It began at 7am as a lurched for the alarm clock, which I'd set to play my long-lost Linkin Park CD. I knew it would wake me up, one way or the other. Actually not bad stuff....
I'd been scheduled to get to CCU (Cardiac Care Unit) for 8.15am, and after all that effort, of course they didn't know we were meant to be coming. We trailed around on the ward round, glancing at quickly shown ECGs and arteriograms, trying to glean info. After that, I clerked a nice man who'd suffered a heart attack last week, and had put it down to indigestion for eight hours before coming in. Unbelievable. The pain, he told me, was excruciating. Still, a nice bloke, with a very thin notes folder. This is an excellent sign, it means an uncomplicated patient, with no nasty past problems to find and remember. A rare entity.
Some marmite toast and coffee from the League of Friends shop filled the gap between then and the usual ward round, back on the respiratory ward. Not a bad one, they always start with lots of questions, and get stretched at the end as the doctors run out of time. Heard a textbook pansystolic murmur (at third time of asking), and bilateral bronchial breathing.
Also clerked a lovely old lady with an occlusion in one of her spinal arteries, some patients are just a joy to talk to. She had roughly a million cards, and an all singing-all dancing ant on a pot plant toy. Don't ask!
Bristol City only bloody won their replay against Coventry to make it to the FA Cup 4th round, home against Middlesborough. It's winnable, I tell you.