Needles

So just how much did a month of sticking needles in my belly thrill me? Not a bit. To be sure, I did not know it was going to be a full month of it going in. My doctor is a sly former Naval officer and currently is a mother of one or two young children. She has plenty of experience getting the marginally-willing to do what we need to do. In this case it was the old "Just a few more days," and "Just a few more days," and "Your blood work is not quite where we want it so Just a few more days" trick. While this worked to ease me into the month of needle sticks with a bit less stress, I would have chosen them over being in the hospital for a month hands down since those were my only options.

I have never been really squeamish about blood, guts and gore, but stick me with a needle and I will usually fall over a few minutes later. Not right away, but later. A delayed dive. This adds to the excitement. Even better has been that, until about ten years ago, almost no one would believe me when I warned them ahead of time that this was going to happen. When I turned 40 for some reason they switched from saying things like, "Oh, come on. A big strong fellow like you passing out from a little ole needle?" to "Thanks for letting me know. Why don't you go ahead and lay down now so I don't have to pick you up later." I don't know whether nurses' training changed so they believed me more or I just sounded more sincere, but I was happy to start laying down instead of waking up to say 'I told you so.'

Here are some stories from days gone by to illustrate just how wonderful my relationship with needles has been over the years. These are the best ones. There have been many others, but they were not nearly so much fun to talk about.

I started this as a single post, but it got too long. I chopped it up into several fun needle stoy posts.