Stop The Ride, I Want To Get Off.

There is something worse than having to take a child for shots: needing to take them for blood work. My poor, sweet little girl isn’t gaining weight as fast as the doctors feel she should be. Even though she was two weeks early she still weighed in at seven pounds, four ounces at birth. Her first birthday is only one month away and she still has not passed the fourteen-pound mark. The pediatrician is fairly confident that her teeny-tiny-ness is a combination of genetics and how active she is. However, with the amount of food the child consumes it just seems odd that she gains only a few ounces every month.

Hence, the command was issued to have blood drawn to check for a reason as to the abnormal weight gain. Keeping in mind the fact that I wanted to get in and out of there as fast as humanly possible, I waited until I thought the lunch hour rush would be over. My timing was a little bit off, however, as one of the phlebotomists was at lunch. Anytime blood needs to be drawn from an infant it requires two technicians: one to do the stick and one to hold the baby’s arm down.

So there I sat, for twenty minutes, waiting in dread and wanting to be at home drinking tea or reading a book, or even plucking my eyebrows. Little Cheekers just straddled my lap and pointed out the lights and watched the cars drive by outside the window while munching an occasional Cheerio. Finally the time came to walk down the hallway of doom and sit in the horrid blue-padded chair of pain and suffering.

As infants, my kids are the type that only needs a stranger to look at them in order to start wailing, but once we were seated and the rubber band was applied to her arm the crying started in earnest. It was my job to hold her other arm down, keep her feet from kicking and to restrain her upper body. I held her tightly while she screamed and wriggled. After what seemed like an eternity the phlebotomist declared that she could not get anything out of the left arm and they would need to try the other. Oh. My. GOODNESS GRACIOUS! I had suggested they try her right arm in the first place!

Lord help me, I thought I was going to start crying myself. There are few things that are more heart wrenching than having your child cling to you in desperation and being unable to relieve their troubles. So the life-squeezing rubber band of sedition was placed on her right arm and the blood was drawn. As if the whole experience wasn’t horrific enough already, the flow was so slow that it took a ridiculous amount of time to get enough for two large and two small tubes. I tried to sing to her and kiss her head, anything to distract her. Nothing worked and by the time it was over she had practically cried herself to sleep. A full ten minutes had passed since we first sat in the chair.

It was everything I had feared it would be and more. Please believe me, I sincerely hope that all of the tests come back normal. Considering how terrible the experience was, how badly she bruised, and how traumatized she must be, I am fairly confident that it will all come to naught and that the whole incident could have been avoided. At least she still loves me.

Early Morning Reverie

I am a morning person in the sense that I relish the morning quiet that allows a person to hear the birds singing even though one lives in the city. I love the soft pinks and blues in the sky as the sun makes its ascent to the peak of the firmament. The only problem is that I loathe getting out of bed while still in the throes of an undisturbed sleep.

This morning I had to be at Quest Laboratories by eight o’clock in order to have some blood drawn for testing. The combination of the crispness in the air and the ebb and flow of the traffic around me as fellow motorist hustled off to work reminded me of my working days, and, for a moment, I actually missed them. Only for a moment.

I arrived at precisely the right time and did not have to wait before being escorted to the room where I would be stuck with the needle. The reason for my early morning visit was two-fold. On top of my routine lab work my physician also wanted to have some further testing done because I have been fatigued more than usual lately.

So there I am, it’s early, I’m tired and the phlebotomist is having some trouble with me because I’m finding it difficult to keep my arm straight instead of resting my elbow on the table. She’s asking me if I’m okay since it’s generally an easy thing to do, sitting there with one’s arm stretched out, the inside of the elbow taught in preparation for the needle’s penetration. The fact is that today I’m there because I’m fatigued, it says so right at the bottom of the script- Dx. fatigue; it is surprising how difficult it is to keep an elbow lifted up off of a table when tired. After being asked to “stop flopping” my arm around “like that” I gritted my teeth in concentration and managed to be of no further trouble while the two vials of blood were drawn.

Ah, well. I shall just add her to the list of people who think I’m odd for one reason or another. After I left I thought it would be a good idea to stop by Dunkin’ Donuts and pick up some sugary treats to eat with our morning coffee. I generally stay away from doughnuts because that much sugar early in the morning tends to make me feel ill; but I thought that maybe the grouping of sugar and caffeine would, at least temporarily, relieve my fatigue. I was wrong. I’m still tired, and all of that sugar coursing through my veins is making my tummy feel a little warbly.