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none! I gave blood today!
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- Melanie
I gave blood today. My second time, and it went rather well.
Y'see, I used to have "needle issues."
I was a gawdawful patient as a kid. I chalk it up to having had a series of gammaglobulin shots as a young child. Exposure to Hep A, I guess. And a tetanus shot when my cousin bit me.
So anyway, I haaaaaaated needles. I remember, when I had eye surgery at the age of four, cringing at the back of this crib that was covered in plastic (like the cheesy plastic that covers a couch) almost like an incubator, while the nurse came after me to give me a shot. I also remember beng held upside-down by my ankles by a lab tech when I fainted while having blood drawn.
I'm sure I put my pediatrician through hell with my insistance at having my arm "frozen" before any shot.
That all changed when I was 18. Freshman year of college, I had to have surgery three times (once in the doctor's office) for cysts on the base of my tongue right above my vocal cords. Talk about your career flashing before your eyes!
I was feeling something in my throat while swallowing. I looked. I saw something. My roommate looked. Same thing. Another friend looked. Ditto.
Off to the University Health Center I went, tra-la. They referred me to a local ENT guy, who told me that even though this thing was cutting off 60 percent of my air passage, it could wait to be taken care of when I went home for Thanksgiving. Now this was right around Halloween. I called my mom from the doctor's office, and she called the guy who had done my last throat surgery when I was around 11. He said, "That's ridiculous - get her home now." So I went home and was set up with a really terrific doctor whose daughter was also going to Syracuse, and he lasered that puppy right off.
You know how when you're young you have no concept of your own mortality? This thing in my throat could have been anything - cancer, a cyst on my cords, something really deep that could have required much more cutting.... Did I factor any of that in? No. My thinking was, "Okay, they'll go in, they'll take it out and all will be well." And they did. And I was suddenly "Superpatient." Needles? No problem. Chatting with the anesthesiologist as he put me under? Just me being friendly. Trache tube? Well, THAT'S thoroughly unpleasant, and you'll be needing to get that out of me real soon because I'll be throwing up blood, but it's a necessary evil, I know.
So somewhere in there, I got over the whole needle thing. I still don't like it (I mean who does?), and my body doesn't particularly enjoy having its vital fluids withdrawn against its will, but I can tolerate it.
(Of course, I don't know how I'd be if I had to go through what Hod Podge has over the past few months, with chemo and ports and stuff. As I wrote in my profile, she's kicked cancer's ass. Go her.)
So anyway, I gave blood. Good tech - I may not even bruise. And that's a miracle.
I might even have to do that more often.
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