Let Me Paint You An Image

In the spirit of keeping you, the readers, aprised on the ups AND downs of this project, the following is my attempt to help paint a picture of what it feels like to blood sample... with good results and bad.

Before I pick up my brush and paint, you all must know what I will be painting on. In other words, you need to have a bit of context. For starters, imagine yourself quitting your day job and becoming a technician at a clinic's lab drawing blood from peoples' arms for a living.

One day, in walks a patient. This patients arms, however, look like the Hulk's as they bulge beneath the shirt that covers them. As the patient nervously sits down in the chair, arm outstretched and fist clenched, you politely ask him to roll his sleeve up. When the patient does, you are met with tattoos that parade up his arm and disappear beneath his Van Halen shirt. Upon closer inspection, the guy has actually had sequence surgically implanted into his arms. Body builder meets female fashionista?

You are now effectively working blind. You cannot see a vein to puncture. You know, in theory, where the vein is supposed to be, but everyone's veins are different - some big, some small in diameter. Needle and vacutainer in hand, you begin prodding. Your first attempt yields nothing, not even a single drop. You remove the needle and reenter, hoping to strike gold. Again, nada. This repeats itself several times, but now your patient is getting a little antsy and starts writhing, complaining about how long it's taking and that maybe you should never have quit your day job. Finally, the needle hits pay dirt and blood rushes into the vacutainer.

This is, sometimes, what it's like trying to take blood from a muskie. The amount of tissue between the anal fin and caudal fin is massive, and gets even more impressive the larger the fish. The scales are like battle armor that deflect needles like an M1 Abrams deflects 9mm bullets. The vasculature system you so desperately need to find lays hidden beneath tissue and scales, and lays in one particular fashion along the backbone. A difficult sweetspot to hit, indeed.

At times, all it takes is one vacutainer. Sometimes, multiples. It is, without doubt, the most frustrating aspect of the data collection process for this project. Well, save for fishing eight hours and never even getting a single follow (now THAT'S frustrating).

Ah, thanks for letting me vent!

I was once told that earplugs bring good luck. Apparently, I was mislead.