It's been a year now! This fucking CML.
Some people on the CML closed forums have a little cancerversary, but I am not sure of the date except that these bloods today should be a year and so I guess I will find out if the poison is doing it's job.
The Blood-ologist today was bloody brilliant, nabbed the vein first shot and didn't swing around too much on the end of it as she filled up the required tubes, and I liked it that she had no fucking idea what she was testing for so looked it up in the book and then online, just to make sure all the stuff was correctly colour coded and sorted. I guess she doesn't see too many CMLers.
She, like all of her cohort, didn't believe that no tapes could be used to adhere the little dab of cotton wool to ensure the trapping of the possible blood geyser. She showed 'em all to me while I wedged a bit of the wool in the inside of my elbow and waved my arm above my head. This might look odd, but it is usually helpful in ebbing the flow, unless a vein has been popped in which case I am pissed and bleeding and bruising happens regardless. So after we had gone through all the possibilities strangely ending with Bandaid? I ran like the wind outta there and tried to drive home keeping the the little wodge of wool in place - not easy in a manual car. Yep, it flew out and is now firmly wedged under my seat where I just cannot reach it. A little bit of my DNA will go with the car where ever she goes. Ho hum.
But I am just shit at the blood tests. In truth I am not sure how I would go doing ANY test these days. Reckon anxiety might rear it's ugly head if I had to sit a spelling test or a maths quiz, and I am sure that if I was asked to pass a Road Rules exam, someone might just take my licence because of my ignorance, or perhaps I could blame the pressure of being tested.
I can't watch ANY part of the blood letting procedure. And I reckon the collectors could be forgiven for thinking that I am some up-myself-pain-in-the-arse, cos I don't speak and I look well away.
I have always been thus.
When I was but a girl going through Chemo, it was about my worst nightmare. Not the poison they filled me up with, even though that was truly shitful, it was the needle probbing that did me in.
All too often my darling dad and I would be scheduled at the same time and in typical Elliott fashion, we kept the punters well entertained. If there was trouble finding a vein, we'd wind up like windmills, forcing all the blood into our hands all the while doing a bit of stand-up. We'd run our arms under really hot water and never stop chattering. We'd give the nurses 3 free shots at the canular before we got even remotely cross, cos the cancer ward is not a place to be cranky,
I have sat too many times to count, with folk as they get their fill of poison, but I just can't watch the needling. It's just oooooh YUKKY to me. Maybe I can still taste the shit from all those years ago, or maybe I am not the least bit odd in this, except that I do know some folk who have a real fascination with it all and wouldn't want to miss the insertion. Again OOOOOH YUKKY!
SO the sticking out of the arm and the making of a fist and the looking anywhere else but at the action, is gonna be a necessary part of life now. I am no longer worried about the 'little sting' even though I do still get the shits up if a vein is popped, cos I reckon that's just bloody careless.
Fingers are crossed that the mutants have all been slaughtered, or at least enough of 'em have pegged it so that the Doc and I know that the poison is worth the trouble.
2 weeks til D Day.
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