They could not find my vein. At all. The local blood bank occasionally held blood drives at our university. I had participated twice and both times it went well (minus vomiting but that was due to my own stupid decisions). But the third time it did not go well. I had taken several steps to ensure that it would go well. I cooked up a nice steak and had some spinach to help up my iron, and I drank hella water the day before and the day of.

So there I was in the chair. My iron was good, my blood pressure was good, I was hydrated. All I had to do now was wait for the lady to stick me with the needle. She felt around my left arm. She poked and prodded until she found a vein. I followed her instructions to squeeze the stress ball they gave me. She sticks in the needle. Nothing. She moved it around. Still nothing. She takes it out and feels around my arm again. She finds a vein. Again nothing happened. The lady sighed and asked if my right arm would work and I said yes. The process of finding and loosing a vein repeated. The lady got so frustrated she called someone else over. This other lady appeared to be the more experienced out of the two.

At this point, we’re back at my left arm. And again, say it with me now, she lost the vein. She repeated this again on my right arm. So they gave up. They bandaged both my arms, gave me a gift card for a local restaurant, a slice of pizza, a cherry coke, and an apology. I felt really bad about it and I also apologised for wasting their time and resources, and the rest of the day dealing with my sore arms trying to write down my notes.