Today we started trailing the work of the person I'm working with. To do this we had to take capillary blood samples. Unlucky for me I was the bloody (quite literally) test case.
Well, it appears we were slightly mislead on to how much blood they wanted to take for gas analysis! We were told that it was just a small pin prick - I can handle small pin pricks (look see how I didn't just say small pricks, I did that on purpose). So you might be able to imagine my displeasure when it's not a little pin they use to break my skin, it's a sodding scalpel! A scalpel to my earlobe is not nice - it's not the feel of the skin being cut that's bad, it's the fact you can hear the skin tearing. Grrr.
When taking a sample from my right ear the first cut wasn't bleeding enough, so the nurse went for another slash! Then the blood gas machine moaned there wasn't enough blood, so they had to slash it again.
God-dammit.