I ate a cookie this morning. The problem with this is I am supposed to do a fasted blood test in about three hours. I wasn’t thinking. The cookies were on the counter, I hadn’t had one yesterday, and I just wanted a cookie. I didn’t think about the doctor’s appointment or how I had trouble giving blood the last time.
The last time. That wasn’t fun. They got the needle into my vein and then nothing. No blood went into the needle. Thinking about it just makes me want to do it less. Maybe eating the cookie is a form of self sabotage to avoid the one thing I hate most in this world, having my blood drawn.
I have no idea when this became the object of my fears, but I cannot stand having my blood drawn. I can’t even stand someone touching my veins. In fact while writing this I had to shift my arms because I can suddenly feel the desk with my veins.
I tried to give blood once. Halfway through it I thought about how relaxing it was and then wondered how long it would take to die, and then threw-up. I don’t like the thought of being dead. It isn’t a pleasant thought. I’d much rather continue to exist than not. There is no way three little vials of blood will do that job, and it really doesn’t hurt that bad. At this moment my veins recreated the feeling of a bruise to show me otherwise.
My body talks to me. It talks to all of it. It’s language just happens to be pain or whatever other signals it wishes to send along the nerves, and right now my veins are protesting the thought of a needly plunging into them. I don’t blame them. I hate it too.
Perhaps it was them that sent the signal to the brain to eat the cookie. They knew I hadn’t had coffee yet and was too tired to think. They knew to tell my arm to reach for that cookie and eat it up. The damage has been done, but I will just give the blood anyway. Get it over with. I just hope I don’t have a repeat of last time. When the needle went into the vein and could pull nothing out.
David Huzzard Writes 