I finally managed to poke a needle into a blood vessel the other day (12th September, 2004). Not that it is physically hard, you understand - I have big vessels on the back of my hand, that bulge up really easily when I squeeze my wrist - it is just that, for everything else I am fine with, I am actually rather squeamish about blood vessels. When I caught my finger in a router a few months ago, I immediately thought it was actually rather funny, despite dripping a constant trail of blood and later needing 7 stitches, but the local anaesthetic and the mention of a tetanus shot when I went to hospital bothered me quite a bit more.
At A Glance Author toast Contact toast83@hotmail.com IAM toast When It just happened Artist (myself) Studio (home) Recently, though, I reviewed an experience from Pip (iam:titanium_angel), which turned out to be rather excellent, and it finally prompted me into having a go. I always liked the idea of easy access to my blood - not least because my tongue piercing taught me that it really tastes rather nice mixed with Lucozade (the original flavour, not the fruit flavours), and at some point I somehow discovered how well it went with vodka, but I forget the exact circumstances.
Oh, and I figured it would make a good bit of primary research for my dissertation.
So, somewhat nervously, I waited until everyone else was asleep, and lay back on my bed with a 23ga (0.6mm) needle and a roll of ptfe tape. The tape was to wrap around my arm, since a belt pinched my skin as I tightened it, and electrical flex was awkward to tie one-handed. The tape was ideal, as it stuck to itself, but not to the skin, and was broad enough to be comfortable. I tied off just above my left elbow, which managed to have absolutely no effect at all on the vessels in my forearm, so I moved it down to my left wrist, making the vessels in my hand bulge up nicely. I then lay there for quite a while, breathing slowly, with the tip of the needle just lined up with the biggest bulge (where I had had a general anaesthetic administered a few years ago, which reassured me that it was relatively safe to go for). Eventually I got up the nerve to push, and it broke the skin surprisingly painlessly. The feeling of it breaching the blood vessel was hard to describe, uncomfortable but quite bearable, but it reminded me again how squeamish I was about breaking vessels. I refused to let this put me off, since before my first studio piercing, I was afraid of needles in general - since then I have pierced myself several times, as well as play-pierced, and been suspended, and so this seemed a good way to break another phobia. It also seemed particularly necessary to get over it, since in a few months I am due for an operation, and will be going under a general again.
Anyway, needless to say there was some feeling of triumph as I saw the hub steadily filling with blood, as well as relief that it was flowing rather than spurting, which was a possibility I was rather concerned about. After all, I had not long since painted all the walls of my room white... anyway, as it approached the rim of the hub, I remembered I had meant to get a bottle for it, which accompanied a rather sudden realisation that I had no-where to put it, and that if I did not do something it would end up all over the sheets - not an easy thing to explain to the rest of the family!
First, I scrabbled in a draw for a plastic bag - I always have a few handy for mailing out jewellery, so I quickly found one - and realised for the first time how hard it was to open with one hand, not wanting to move the one with the needle in it.
That filled rather soon though, resulting in me surrendering, and starting to just catch it in my mouth, whilst trying to close the bag without spilling it everywhere, then pulling the needle out. For a few seconds the blood flowed out through my skin, which prompted a couple of seconds of worrying before it stopped.
In case you were wondering, the bag of blood later ended up in a glass with some ice & some Absolut, which I decided I deserved after all that.
I think what surprised me most was how tender the area felt the next morning, with the area a little swollen and achy for about a day and a half after. It was not too worrying - since the area around it felt fine, I was not about to assume there was real damage - there were no signs of lack of blood flow to my hand, which is what I would have expected. It was, if anything, just a little frustrating that it made it too difficult to poke another needle in the next day to have a second go, with better preparation.
As a final note: I have not, so far, mentioned hygiene. Very little consideration was given to this during the procedure, beyond washing my hands particularly thoroughly (to hospital standards, as best as I am equipped for), using a needle fresh from a sterile packet, and swabbing the immediate area. Sterile gloves would naturally have been preferable, and as far as possible, I would recommend as near a sterile environment as possible - if you have a sympathetic enough piercer to use their studio, all the better. Should you choose to attempt this yourself, I would ask that you make use of every resource available to educate yourself - if you found this, then you should have no trouble finding BME's own encyclopedia, experiences, and FAQ's, as I did, to make this as safe - and at least every bit as importantly, as enjoyable - an experience for you as possible.
The more you read on the subject, the more confident you will feel, and the more confident, the more you will enjoy it.