When good deeds backfire

[Mojo Jojo]

I'm a regualr blood donor and have just organised a workplace donation. I managed to get about 1/3 of the buildings employees to donate so a pretty good result. I spent a few weeks building up to it talking people into it and saying that nothing goes wrong, it's painless, good cause etc.
So what happens on the day? The nurse taking my blood stuffs up and goes right through the vein, resulting in a fairly large and impressive lump, bruising and internal bleeding in my arm after the donation. When I point out what is happening to the nurse he grabs an ice pack and straps it on with pressure (hurts like hell by the way). At which stage my body decides it doesn't like the situation and thinks it's a good idea to pass out in sympathy with my arm. So a day after I'm left with the embarrasment of passing out in front of workmates and a massive bruise on my arm (12cm x 9cm and growing as it comes to the surface) from something I've done multiple times before.

Not too bad in the bigger picture, and I'll donate again (although hopefully with a different nurse draining me) but got me thinking about those times when you should have kept your mouth shut, stayed at home or just not gotten out of bed that day. So what's backfired on you when you've tried to do the right thing?

[raptor]

Sorry to hear about your experience. I hate giving blood. I have deep, "rolly" veins or so I am told several ties by apologetic and embarrassed phebotomists.

Every time I give blood it routinely takes 2 to 3 sticks to get a good vein. Once when I was too ill to say "Stop!" and "go get your supervisor, dammit" some phebotomist stuck me 7 times in 3 different places before giving up. The worst part I was in so much pain that I did not know it until the pain medication wore off about 4 hours later.

I have experience you describe almost every time I give blood.

It is most unpleasant.

[squinty]

Sorry to hear about your experience. I hate giving blood. I have deep, "rolly" veins or so I am told several ties by apologetic and embarrassed phebotomists.

Every time I give blood it routinely takes 2 to 3 sticks to get a good vein. Once when I was too ill to say "Stop!" and "go get your supervisor, dammit" some phebotomist stuck me 7 times in 3 different places before giving up. The worst part I was in so much pain that I did not know it until the pain medication wore off about 4 hours later.

I have experience you describe almost every time I give blood.

It is most unpleasant.

I've worked as a hospital phlebotomist and as a donor phlebotomist for the Red Cross (for all of two months - didn't like.) Everywhere I've worked had a two sticks per person rule. If you tried and failed twice to get someone's blood, you cease efforts to draw and sought a more experienced co-worker or supervisor. At most hospitals, if three different lab employees tried and failed to get a specimen, lab was to defer to physicians, nurses or respiratory therapists who could try to get blood by other means (femoral, central line, or etc.) If somebody stuck you seven times in one collection, they were likely in serious violation of their department's policy. Maybe they were being pressured by a nurse or physician to "just hurry up and get it" - and it may well have been an urgent situation where they needed a sample asap - but there's really no excuse to perforate someone 7 times at a go.

[NamelessStain]

I've worked as a hospital phlebotomist and as a donor phlebotomist for the Red Cross (for all of two months - didn't like.) Everywhere I've worked had a two sticks per person rule. If you tried and failed twice to get someone's blood, you cease efforts to draw and sought a more experienced co-worker or supervisor. At most hospitals, if three different lab employees tried and failed to get a specimen, lab was to defer to physicians, nurses or respiratory therapists who could try to get blood by other means (femoral, central line, or etc.) If somebody stuck you seven times in one collection, they were likely in serious violation of their department's policy. Maybe they were being pressured by a nurse or physician to "just hurry up and get it" - and it may well have been an urgent situation where they needed a sample asap - but there's really no excuse to perforate someone 7 times at a go.

2 sticks? I wish! I was in tech school when we were all marched down to give blood. The trainee stuck me 5 times with no success, I got up and started to walk away. Our First Sergeant saw me and ask what I was doing. I just showed him my arm and he eyeballed the trainee. He sat me back down, grabbed the head nurse and made her do it.

[majorhavoc]

On Thursday, March 1st, we had one of the few real snow storms in southern Maine this year. Bad enough my company announces it's closing early at 2:30pm, a real rarity. Around 2:00pm I get an email from the local soup kitchen: their entire volunteer crew bailed on account of the storm.

I don't have anything better to do so I call up the volunteer cordinator: "When do you need me? 4:30? I'll be there." My normal commute home is a half an hour (in good weather), so there was no sense in going home just to turn around to fight my way back into the city. So I hang out at work as the storm worsened. I must have been one of the last people in the building when I left at 3:30pm. I take a (small) detour to grab a burger before heading over to the soup kitchen. I remember deciding to cut through a parking lot because it would allow me to avoid two intersections in the worsening conditions. Once I got into the lot I remember thinking it would be best to stick to the perimeter rather than mix things up by cutting straight through. So I'm creeping around the edge of the lot when I encounter a snow bank that I have to angle around. That's when I collide with another car coming from the opposite direction.

This is the first car crash I've ever had in over 30 years of driving where I was the driver, not a passenger. But for the soup kitchen I would have been home an hour earlier, kicking back with a beer.

No one was hurt and both cars were still drivable. So I exchanged insurance information with the other driver and still managed to help serve almost 400 meals to an especially appreciative crowd of clients that evening (being homeless stinks, but being homeless in the winter must just suck).

But the whole time I just kept thinking: "No good deed goes unpunished."