Blood lab hell

We had to get new doctors since moving to Delaware, where there is apparently a trend: doctors don't take your blood and send it out to the lab, they send your blood to the lab while it's still inside your veins. You go to the lab.

You don't get an appointment to go to the lab. You go and take your chances. This way, you get a real good dose of the place. That'll teach you to use our medical system!

The blood laboratories in Delaware combine the ambiance of a bureacratic office in a Soviet satellite with the charm of a Greyhound bus station. Dingy low rent rooms filled with old ladies in wheelchairs, screaming infants, and ambulant children running around. One or two people coughing or sneezing heartily, not covering their mouths or noses, so that if you were not sick when you got here, there's a good chance you'll catch something after you go home. All that is lacking to complete the picture is a live chicken or perhaps a small pig or two.

You sit there reading back issues of the Quarter Horse Monthly or Twenty-first Century Plumbing and heating. A huge television hangs over your head, blasting Jerry Springer or somebody at ear-splitting volume.

Eventually, your turn comes. You are then informed that you should have fasted for 24 hours before taking the blood. Go home and come back tomorrow....

Rinse and repeat.

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