Blood letting

I had to go for a blood test this morning. Which meant that for the last few days, ever since my doctor demanded that a undergo a series of analyses to figure out just why whatever happened to me keeps happening to me, I have been so stressed that my allergies have been acting up big time, which has been making it all such a delightful experience. All that apart, I headed out, Father in tow for moral support, at the crack of dawn this morning to be perforated and donate much of my hard-earned corpuscles to the cause of science and, hopefully, a solution to my various problems, none of which are of any major importance, but all of which are niggling irritants.

So there I was at the hospital, waiting for the process to begin. I started with the pathology department, which to me seemed logical. There I was directed, with a friendly smile, to the accounts department, which is where it all happens – pay and you get what you need, as the mantra goes anywhere in the world. I beamed happily at the lady behind the counter (choose the most intelligent looking person, Father instructed) and she whizzed about clacking keys on her computer and looking bright eyed on whatever she managed to pull up on the screen. Things were moving along briskly and seemingly efficiently. And then we hit a snag. A fairly major one, considering the look on the lady’s face. She looked up at me, smiled sweetly, leaned over and asked her neighbour something, then looked at me again, a tint of apology in her smile, and clacked at more keys, this time a little faster. And then shrugged to herself, looked at me, smiled once more and launched into her explanation.

It turned out that her computer did not list the tests my doctor had indicated I needed to have done. Well, not all of them, at least. So she had to ask around until she figured out what she had to do, during which I had to please sit down on the alarmingly squashy sofa placed against the wall over there, she waved her arm. Obediently, I did, Father close behind me. We waited, smiled occasionally at the still confused lady and waited some more. Finally, inspiration seemed to waft over the telephone connection and some oracle gave her the information she needed. The smile was relieved this time and we trotted over to pay and then continue on our quest. All the requisite papers signed, we walked back to the pathology section, handed in the forms and waited. Finally, when it was my turn, I sat down on the little desk-chair, closed the flap, stretched out my arm and waited, feeling like a prisoner asking for her last meal of, I devoutly hoped, the best chocolate money could buy.

But it was not to be that simple. The lady at the computer found that the cashier’s receipt and the list of tests I needed to have done did not match. We went through a series of smiles, ranging from the friendly to the curious to the apologetic to the resigned. Finally, she gave me another slip of paper that detailed the omissions, told me I had to go back to the accounts department once the blood collection was done, and then I could send the receipt for that further payment back to her while I trotted off to wherever I was headed thereafter. I smiled once more, this time with a certain generous dose of trepidation attached, since it was at last the moment of truth for me: would the needle, the technician and my usually uncooperative vein behave themselves or cause me undue discomfort…once again?

It was a cinch, literally and otherwise. The smiling – why do people who are associated with anything bloody have such sweet smiles? – technician pushed up the short sleeve of my T-shirt, tied his band around my upper arm, cinched it tight and patted the vein that pulsed blue in the bend of my elbow. He inserted a needle so deftly that I barely felt more than a little and very gently cold point against my skin. Then he proceeded to fill many tubes with richly deeply dark red liquid that was my lifeblood, smiling all the while, but with no vestige of that dire Dracula-like show of teeth that the breed of blood-workers often delight in. I had been most apprehensive for no reason. Pulling the needle out of my arm was a process that I felt quite sharply, but not overly painfully, and it was done. Perhaps the most adverse reaction I had was that the skin of my inner elbow did not like the sticky tape that was placed on the spot the needle had gone in, but that is nothing new. I am allergic to almost everything. Which is why I went through this morning at all!