Veins, Muscles and Bones

It's Friday. I have done well this first week. By yesterday, I began to feel a few side effects of the radiation and chemo, but it was pretty mild. I'm looking forward to a weekend without the clinic.

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I'm always tempted to take photographs of horses. I think the attraction is the mass of veins muscles and bones that are only thinly veiled by a horses hide. The right light of the late afternoon hits the landscape of a horses body and produces at least four distinct light to dark values on every hill and valley. Compositions form everywhere. You can find a beautiful landscape almost anywhere on a horses body in the right light.

The same is true of a human body. Artists spend a lifetime exploring compositions in sculpture, painting, and drawing the landscape of the human body. The area from the hand to the shoulder is a study in itself. There are interesting hard light bones, softer light veins and even softer light muscles.

I first noticed my own emerging hand to shoulder landscape at about 16 years old. As puberty ended, the veins on the back of my hand started to show. The veins worked there way up my wrist and disappeared into my forearm. My forearm began to develop muscle. The veins emerged again at the white inside of my arm, opposite my elbow and disappeared into developing bicep.

The new landscape of my arms made me want to roll up my long sleeve shirts half way up my elbows and show the world that I was a force to be reckoned with. I warded off bullies with the look of those forearms. They weren't exceptional, but I was no longer a boy. I was accepted on sports teams. I could find dates with girls , many of whom had just shifted there interest from horses to boys.

I was conscious and a little proud of my arms then. I'm still comforted by those same arms even though the landscapes include age spots. Blood lab technicians are also tuned into to the nuances of the hand to shoulder landscape. I must have had a million blood samples taken and every technician, except one, took a studied look at the veins and said, "Wow, this is going to be easy!"
I heard those exact words five times this week as each lab technician surveyed my arms for an easy place to stick an IV.

I had one exception. Monday, I was sitting in a lab chair waiting to hear a "Wow!" and no one was ready to work with me. This lab at Sanford is busy. I noticed a technician who was busier than most. She was overweight, poorly groomed and bustling around talking to everyone and no one at the same time. She was imitating a bad sitcom with attempts at being cute and funny with an outdoor voice. She even paused for the canned laughter that comes in her favorite shows.

The pauses brought no laughter, no eye contact, no visible attention. Everyone else in the lab was doing their best to avoid being the audience she craved. She had a Texas accent and all the body language that goes with that culture. Swagger. Big gestures. All the other technicians were moving around quietly and efficiently. They had no swagger or big gestures. From their strong accents, I gathered that they were recently from China, India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, Central America and South America.

After a few minutes, I realized that the Texan didn't want to work with me or anyone else. She passed up several up several opportunities to get me started and changed another pillow case instead. A supervisor finally came to her and nudged her my way.

She looked at my arm and sighed. "Oh, this is going to be difficult!", she said. She retrieved some gauze, alcohol, tape and two needles. She wrapped a tourniquet around my upper arm but she didn't twist it tight to make the veins stand out more clearly. She grabbed my wrist and looked at my forearm. She stuck a needle in. It hurt. She probed around trying to get into a vein. It hurt more. She said in frustration, " It blew out on me."

She repeated the whole process two inches farther up my arm. It hurt again. She said "This one blew out, too."She left to get more needles. I had a moment to gather my thoughts. When she returned, I said, "I don't know if you are aware but we have a 'three strikes' law in California." She looked up at me. I continued, "With three offenses, the judge has no choice but to send you to prison for life. Rather than take the chance, why don't you get someone else to try".

She turned around quickly and asked another technician to do my IV.

The new technician looked at the bruises on my arms that were already beginning to show. She rolled her eyes. She tightened the tourniquet. She grabbed my wrist, gently and confidently. She warned me that I would feel a pinch. I never did feel the pinch. The needle was in and taped before I knew it. I said, "Wow, that was good!". She stroked my arm over the bruises and said, through her thick Chinese accent, "You have nice arms".

I relaxed and basked in the moment the way a horse would if you stroked it's shoulder and said something soothing. For a moment, the fluorescent light became sunlight. The hospital green walls became grass green. I thought I felt the slightest fresh breeze touch the right side of my face. The smell of rubbing alchohol and disinfectent disappeared. I closed my eyes and drifted off to better pastures.