Mayalaen

Here’s how our (my mom and I) first lab draw from in-home phlebotomist went.

• dude was covered in sweat and complaining that his car was breaking down and he couldn’t use the A/C
• i had to ask him to put a mask on
• he had to search through his car for a mask that was on the floor in the back of the car
• he wasn’t sure how many tubes he needed to fill for the tests my mom and i needed so he looked it up on his phone while we waited
• he used ONE pair of gloves for both my mom and i and kept wiping is forehead, hair, and neck to get rid of the sweat dripping
• as he was taking the blood, he was whipping the full tubes into his bag
• once all the tubes from both of us were tossed in the bag he was like “oh I guess I should’ve labeled those” pulled them back out and labeled them
• the pads he used to bandage us were in the bottom of his bag and not packaged
• he forgot that we needed urine samples, so he went back out to his car and searched the back seat and the trunk for a container, all without changing his gloves and neither the container nor the specimen bag were packaged or sealed
• he couldn’t figure out how to note on the papers that a copy needed to be sent to my primary doc so i called my doc and got the fax number for him
• after he left his car actually did break down
• he left the car there for an unknown amount of time and had his “friend” pick up the bag of blood tubes and take them to a lab for him
• he’s tried calling us a bunch of times trying to get us to give him more info because “the lab needs to be paid for this” but he lost all our information so they can’t bill our insurance company for it

I haven’t given him any more info, and when I called the company that employs him, they said very dismissively “yeah we’ll look into that.” The woman couldn’t have sounded less concerned or surprised by the whole thing, and I doubt she even did anything about it.

The second time we got it done it was with GetLabs.com, and I very highly recommend them!

They’re only in about 3 states right now, but they were super professional, very nice, and the woman that came to do the lab draw was really calm and patient with my mom, who had recently had a seizure. She also very carefully labeled everything and had me check everything before she left.

She had biohazard containers, changed her gloves frequently, wiped down everything, and packed it all so our stuff didn’t get mixed up.