Jennifer Lynne has hemophilia B and lives in Florida. She shares humorous stories about explaining bruises and blood draw challenges.

I get a lot of questions. “How did you get that bruise?” Honestly, most times I don’t know how I got the bruise, so I’ve started making up answers.

For example, “I was wrestling a bear in my living room, and this was the souvenir.” Or, “Well, I got the bruise while I was practicing to be an extreme athlete.” Because most of the time I have no clue how I got the bruise.

When I go to get my blood drawn, for some reason the lab that draws my blood, ever since COVID, they don’t use butterfly needles.

And they also don’t have the — I think it’s called Coban tape, the tape that they wrap around your arm to help with the bleeding. Instead, they just slap a Band-Aid on it.

So there’ve been more than one occasion where I’ll go to Publix, I’ll go grocery shopping after they draw my blood, and after like 10 minutes, I look down and then I have blood running down my arm.

So I try to just laugh about it. Obviously, it’s not ideal, but I’ve gotten to the point where I try to bring my own tape because I know that the Band-Aid’s not gonna cut it.