Okay, so I haven't posted on here in a while. I have however been doing my indoor track workouts. Stayed off the heavy lifting until I could find out for sure what was up with my arm. This week track has been really slow. Mostly hurdle form and running form stuff to try to get the new people to run with high knees and flexed toes. I'll be getting a schedule next we so we can rework my lifting routine.
So on to the more important stuff... today I found out what really happened. Medical anatomy teacher (also the school's trainer) explained what happened. What I have isn't really a bruise and my vein didn't really get punctured. Considering the abnormal pain I felt with the needle first entering, I think the needle did go through. But that shouldn't be enough to keep me bruised that long. If I remember the explanation right, what happens is while the nurse removed the needle she made a mistake in the way she cut off the blood flow to the vials they use for testing, or did it out of order or something, and the blood in the tube "backfed" into my arm. It was too much for the veins to keep up with so it pooled. Rapid change in blood pressure explains why it's the only time I've ever felt like I was about to black out. There's really nothing to do about it. It seemed to get worse at first because the blood that backfed and pooled has to dissipate in my arm.
So yeah... I'm set to go and apparently it'll still take about two weeks until it looks 100% normal again. I can do all my normal exercises already. The dissipation also explains why my light runs and workouts during this first week of indoor have only made it feel better. Even though heavy stuff feels uncomfortable right now, the bloodflow from the lighter aerobic stuff is just helping it dissipate faster. Kind of awesome, but the blood pooling still looks pretty gross.
