Drum Roll Please

Yesterday..... I drew blood at the clinic. Nokuzola's main job at the clinic is running the blood room and drawing from the children to measure their cd4 count, their viral load... the list goes on. Being interns of her, Kayla and I spend a fair majority of the day in the room with her. She asked us one of the first days if we wanted to draw blood, we naturally said no, and she hasn't brought it up since. However, last Monday we decided we wanted to learn. Because neither of us had ever drawn blood before, we did the only logical thing and drew it on each other. All went well, I got blood on the first try, and 12 seconds after finishing Nokuzola asked us if we wanted to do it on the child who'd just walked in the door. We both politely declined, as we were a little freaked out by the radius of the child's vain. As I'm sure you can tell by this point in my story, drawing blood is no exception when it comes to different practices here as compared to the US. It's crazy that I can walk in to a clinic and stick a needle in a patients arm with little to no training. Anyways, yesterday we decided we were ready for it, so we told Nokuzola, and before I knew it I was sticking a needle in a little boys arm. And I got it on the first try again! I'm officially now 2-0... spread the word. The little boy happened to be one of the children from Beautiful Gate, named Olwethu. When I saw him at BG today he was pointing to his arm and then to me, clearly telling his friends that I had drawn his blood yesterday. Anyways, I was so excited about the whole thing I had to tell all you guys back home. Missing you all!!