Nine Needles A Stabbing

And my arms look like a junkieeeeeeeeee's!
This last time that I got my Tysabri done they could not get an IV started on me; my veins would blow every time they tried to push the syringe of whatever-that-fluid-is into them. I blew (get it?) past my old record of 5 pricks (way too many pricks for any woman to deal with) into a new astounding 9 times! The last record was from the steroids, which we all know mess up your veins, and I was not particularly interested of breaking that record. It surprises me that I would be a hard person to get an IV started on, having garden hoses for veins, especially in my hands. I was not really worried about the difficulty in starting an IV on me, but my mother was. My mother is an RN (she got her BSN degree in her late 40's after my father walked out on us, an inspiring story of determination and tenacity that I can't relate to) and she was concerned about it. She was asking me all kinds of things, like if they considered trying my thumb, which she called the "nursing student spot," whether they thought about doing one on my leg, which would need a doctor's approval, or if they talked about starting a pick (right spelling? I don't know. I've never seen it in print, just heard the word.) line on me. Even before my mom was an RN she always worked in the medical field, so I took in medical terms with my baby food and beyond. We didn't get bruises, we got hematomas. Diarrhea? Never. But one could have loose stools. A runny nose? Not here. But you could have inflamed mucos membranes with discolored secretions. And God forbid we get a splinter! Out would come the needle and the bottle of rubbing alcohol. We hated the needle, so much so that we would rather have a 2x4 sticking out of our foot than deal with that painful extraction. So when anyone talks of things like pick lines, sub-q, IM and such I know what they are talking about. Even before I had MS I knew, but giving myself injections, both sub-q and IM, really brought it home for me. When she would come to the hospital to visit me when I was doing the steroids, she would check the bag, the rate of infusion, my blood pressure, all that fun stuff, just to make sure her baby was having it done right. Now with my arms all bruised and looking like the arse end of a drug binge, her best advice to me was to wear long sleeves so nobody would get the wrong idea. How pathetic. I expected better from the woman who asks for, "50 ccs of ketchup, STAT!"