Its all fun in games until someone gets a needle in them...

Phlebotomy: the act or practice of opening a vein for letting blood as a therapeutic measure.

 (Definition thanks to dictionary.reference.com)

Welp, this post is no doubt about what has been consuming my life, thoughts, and even my dreams as of late. Phlebotomy folks!!!

Some of the supplies required for a routine venipuncture.

In my quest to gain residency in Arizona I could no longer do online through a California school and I needed a job that would take taxes out of my paycheck... So as a resolution to both of these problems I enrolled in AMTI.

Now, for quite sometime I have wanted to learn the art of Phlebotmoy, and yes I say art. Now I know for all you folks who know all about Picasso and the color wheel and so on and so on will not consider this art... you would call this a skill. But to me, a girl who is in love with science (In fact, science thus far has been my only true love... what can I say? We have formed quite a BOND haha.), to me, anything to do with science and the medical field is beautiful. And is not art supposed to be a thing of beauty? A thing that arouses feelings and emotions in an individual? Well, that is what science and anything medical does to me... Not saying there is anything glamorous in the medical field. There ain't nothin' glamorous about it. Having to deal with all sorts of  bodily fluids including urine and diving into someone's stool does not call for the faint of heart or the red carpet. It calls for those who look at all of it and even though it is quite disgusting it intrigues them... this is not what I would call glamour.

Anyways, since January I have been reading and studying this. And for the last five weeks I have been poking my fellow students with needles and I have been getting poked.

Just a couple of the many packets I had to stuff into my brain and have memorized!!!

Now my class was a small one. A class of characters to say the least. It had the typical high school girl drama, the only difference is that these women were well into their adults years. And it had the shy guy, the guy from out of country who was the witty one, the class clown, the sweet one, and then the nerd. Guess who I was guys!!!

If you answered nerd then you'd receive a 100%, if this was a test that is.

Now...
They all thought that I had some kind of special power or something cause I would either not study or I would for maybe an hour and I would have panels memorized and get A's on the tests.

What can I say?? I am just blessed. And I know how to study. I know the best of systems to memorize. I perfected this in my Anatomy class. And since then my time in memorizing has gotten faster and faster. But, I was the total nerd... the kind of nerd who sat in the front of the class and knew all the answers...

Now I have been a nerd all my life. In fact, I was labeled the nerd day one in middle school when I would finish my homework in class and then go home and do the extra credit cause there really was not a lot else for me to do.

I guess I just never thought of myself as a nerd. I mean who lays down at night and says to themselves, "By- golly-gee I am such a NERD!!" with a huge smile on their face. I guess there were signs of this... As a kid I read books (and I mean real books, not the pretty picture books) about the ocean, I watched the discovery channel instead of the oh so popular Nickelodeon, and I did extra credit so that I could bump up my 100% to a 102%.

But I thought I cured my nerd... I thought I left that behind in my junior year in high school; a year that I did not do extra credit and I dropped my A.P. classes. But I guess once you are a nerd, you are always a nerd. It re-manifested itself in my Human Anatomy class... and even more so in my Phlebotomy class.

So what if I get all giddy at the fact that I am wearing scrubs and have a bunch of crazy things floating in my head like ethylenediaminetetraacetate chelates calcium??? I mean come on...

Me in one of my scrubs... a dream come true for a gal like me!

Luckily unlike in all those movies about high school no one bullied me. They just kinda thought I was magical. hahaha And I can dig that. :)

I even got to the point that I had a dream about Phlebotomy.... there was a little boy in the middle of a street and I had to draw blood on him, but he was a picky one. He was allergic to latex and freaked out when I applied hand sanitizer on my hands cause he didn't like it. But I got blood out of him so it was a happy ending. Despite the odd fact that I did this all in the street.

But anyways, I loved my class and I loved learning how to phlebotomy! hahaha

And come Monday I begin an externship. This means I will now be poking REAL clients! Not phlebotomy students but people who NEED me to get their blood and not damage their delicate erythrocytes so that they can receive proper treatment for their various illnesses.

Needless to say, I am so NERVOUS! And yet so extremely EXCITED!!! I even bought some snazzy $12 NON-POROUS shoes for my first day! ( They have to be non-porous just in case of any blood spills or urine spills. See, I told you it is not a thing of glamour.)

These past five weeks have been rough on me though, even for a nerd! ha Especially this last week cause life consists more of just school. But in the end of it all I can see the many blessings I have in my life due to a loving Father in Heaven. I can see the good and give thanks for not only the good, but all the difficult times. And if you keep on going you will be blessed. Someday and somehow the blessings will come, usually at the most unexpected moments.