Blood!!

Yeah, I know, slacking again.

Anyway, this week was back to class, and we spent a large portion of our time handling blood. On Tuesday, I did my very first venipuncture, and managed a successful jugular stick on our sheep, along with a slightly less successful cephalic stick. I got a flash in the hub of the needle on the cephalic, but couldn't draw blood to save my life. My teammates couldn't get blood from the cephalic either though, so I think our sheep was just faulty. The jugular more than made up for it though and I easily pulled a full 3cc's. Took me about 7 tries to hit the vein, but I got blood, didn't blow the vein, and got the blood into the purple top with no spillage, so I call it a victory.

Thursday and Friday were spent analyzing said blood, which was highly entertaining. Thursday was all about learning how to do good blood smears, and let me tell you....it is WAY harder than it looks.

Dolores gave us 2 demos, and then did a demo using her left hand (and it still came out perfectly), so I was starting to think I wouldn't have too much trouble. I mean, really....place a drop of blood on the bottom slide, touch the edge of the top slide to it so the blood wicks along the edge, and then push the blood into a smear. Easy.



Yeah, so. About that easy bit....

To be fair, that pile of rejects isn't just mine. Alona and I pooled our spoil pile to save on cleanup, so at least half of them are hers. Still, we went through almost 2 boxes of slides in search of....



The perfect smear! See the pretty rainbow? The feathered edge and distinct lack of streaking? The way the blood doesn't run over the edges of the slide? Oh yeah. It's beautiful.

Friday was spent learning how to do hematocrit readings, total proteins, and fibrinogen levels. I learned that Dave is nicely within normal ranges on all of these, and that I am a total wimp when it comes to the necessary snapping of capillary tubes. Breaking glass on purpose just freaks me out, ok?

Both days were also spent being total dorks with classmates. Have I mentioned how much they rock?