I gave blood today. Apparently I have no center veins, so they had to use my right arm outer vein.

Which rolled out of the way. Stung like the dickens, too.

My nurse called over another nurse, who successfully stuck the vein without even pulling the needle out. Then I stopped bleeding. The same thing happened to me a few donations ago, but it was the other arm. And it took that nurse 8 or 10 tries, with significant bruising, before she managed to stick the vein. No idea what the problem was: clotting, piece of skin, whatever... that side was done. They wrapped me up in a white bandage.

I had them try the other side. Only an outer vein there, too. This time we got it on the first try and managed to miss all my nerves: it barely hurt at all. I was done bleeding in under 5 minutes. They wrapped me up with a blue bandage.

With my red shirt, white right arm bandage, and blue left arm bandage, I'm feeling very patriotic today. :-D