Blood test horror

I'm in a terrible mood today, after the lady who took blood for my blood test messed up big time. There were 6 little tubes to fill, 2 bigger than the rest. But they're tiny. I've had blood taken before, and this has never happened. First she took blood from my right arm. She barely filled the 2 bigger tubes when we both noticed that no more bloods are sucked into the tube. She said she needed to take it from the other arm. She also suggested that I lied down instead of sitting down. "Blood will flow better", said her. I said u-huh, and I lied down. She ventured off to the other arm and suck the blood from it, this time she only managed to fill 2 little tubes. In case you haven't had any blood test before, all these blood tests are done using NEEDLE. Yes. A combination of NEEDLE and BLOOD. Oh the horror is coming back to me now. Anyway, those who keep count, we still need two more tubes to fill. Yes, so she asked me if I prefer to do it some other time, or if she can go back to the other arm. I said to myself, why would I want to do this all over again if I can get it done today? So I said, go ahead then. To my horror, this time not even a single drop of blood coming out from my right arm! *cry* At this point the nurse said "We would have to do this some other time, because I had 3 go's already, and that's the maximum I could do." Somehow after that I felt a tiny bit of a relief, only for two seconds, since then I realised I need to do this whole thing again!
The nurse said she'll book me next week on Wednesday morning with a phlebotomist (=a blood testing expert) instead of a regular nurse (like her). That eased off my worry a bit. Not very long, because she then mentioned that the four tubes she took might not be enough, she'd have to wait for the laboratory to get back to the clinic to say whether it's enough or not. So I might have to do another 6, not 2! *face in horror*

Anyway, since that put me off smiling for the whole day, I thought I'd take this opportunity to rant.

Reading BBC News online today made me realised how much money on tax we spent to accommodate MPs to debate about pointless subjects. The headline today is about changing the honours system. They want to rename the Order of the British Empire (OBE) to Order of British Excellence, because some people argued it's no longer appropriate. Do we really care? Don't they have better things to talk about rather than spending time talking about the honour from a monarch that people know is no longer served the same meaning as before? Do we really care who's getting OBE and who's not?

When I was ranting about this, Will pointed me to another BBC news page. The Zimbabweans are getting ambulances as donation from Unicef per request by the Zimbabwean Government. But get this. The ambulances aren't the ones we normally see about. They're not running on petrol. These are ox-drawn carts! There are a few things wrong in there. First of all, why do Zimbabwean government asked for ox-drawn ambulances? Second of all, probably Zimbabwean Government didn't ask for ox-drawn ambulances, it's just Unicef being a bit imaginative. But if you donate something to someone, wouldn't you donate something more useful instead? Like ones running on petrol? Okay, maybe car is a lot more expensive than oxes, but instead of NINE ox-drawn ambulances they could have donated ONE normal ambulance. I'm sure it'll be more effective. Probably the Zimbabwean government doesn't have any money to buy petrol? Even if it's true, this ambulance is an investment. Maternity mortality has doubled from 1994 to 1999. With this ambulance, those problems could very well be reduced. I still think Unicef could have done better. Probably with horses?