>Someone who wants to tell you something true doesn't lead their communication with emotional distraction.

This seems needlessly cynical. Someone can have multiple objectives in writing, to tell you facts and also to capture your attention or to convey an emotion and motivate you to action. Very little writing is done with a single purpose in mind. We don’t expect academics drafting research papers to eschew concerns about the impact the writing will have on their career for example.

Starting a story with an anecdote that humanizes the information is simply acknowledging the reality that people want more than just facts. If the latter was all they wanted, most of us would only read encyclopedias and textbooks.

It's not emotional distraction, it establishes the reason the subject was getting blood tests, which is revealed later in the same sentence. If this is your level of reading stamina you must find yourself very poorly informed. Even a tweet would be too long for you.