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At The Phlebotomist

Emily has been suffering from exhaustion to the point where I was becoming concerned that she might be anemic.  She will be standing there talking like a normal person and she will turn white as a sheet and have to go nap for seven or eight hours.  I did the whole "how worried should I be" dance in my head and finally decided to take her to the doctor and have her blood checked.

Emily apparently has my father's tiny veins.  It took two phlebotomists examining both arms to find a vein they could use.  

Because this was in the middle of the day, they asked her if she was glad to be missing school.  She told them she is homeschooled and would still have to finish her schoolwork for the day.

I piped up and told them this was a field trip for her to learn what a phlebotomist does and they looked at me like I was the worst mother on the planet.  It was a joke, people!

All of this resulted in the knowledge that Emily is deficient in Vitamin D which you get from sunshine (we haven't seen the sun in Illinois since November) and milk (which Emily is allergic to).  So now she is taking Vitamin D supplements.

In three months we will take another "field trip" to draw blood again and see if she's perkier (more perky?). 
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  1. Hospital JobsMarch 14, 2017 at 10:12 PM

    Thank you for sharing; this is such wonderful information. Keep up the good work guys!

    ReplyDelete

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