Last week, when I went to the Dr. Clinic, he decided to do some bloodwork to see if I had mono.
When a woman came to suck the blood out of me, I pushed up my sleeve and she said "Oh good! You brought your veins with you!"
I must have given her a funny look because she explained "Your veins are very visible."
Which surprised me, because it wasn't always that way.
I used to ride my bike up and down the street. At first, that's all I was allowed to do.
I had one of those girly bikes with a big pink seat and flowery basket on the front. It was totally cool.
At the very beginning of my first grade year, I was riding down the sidewalk and for some reason just fell into our yard.
I had taken plenty of spills on that bike. I used to think it was fun. So, I wasn't too upset by falling on this day.
But when I tried to get up, I couldn't. My arm just wouldn't support me or something.
It didn't hurt that much, but it did scare me a lot. So what did I do? I screamed my head off.
My brother, who was running around outside, waddled up to me and asked "Sissy okay?"
Awww! What a cute and caring little brother! Did I tell him I appreciated his kindness? Nah. Instead, I screamed "NOOOOOOOOOOO!"
Once my parents finally realized what was going on, they rushed me to the hospital. X-Rays were taken and it was discovered I had broken my elbow.
The weird part is that I broke my left elbow. But I fell down onto my right side.
I had broken the elbow so close to the joint, the doctor decided to send me to Manhattan to get it repaired.
So off to Manhattan we went. I had tuckered myself out with all the screaming and fell fast asleep in the car.
I'd like to defend the behavior that follows with the following reasons:
1. I had just woken up in a strange place. When you're a kid, that's scary.
2. I was in a hospital. That's scary, too!
3. I was in a room full of strangers.
4. People were poking, prodding and jabbing at me. They said "This won't hurt." and then it hurt a lot! Liars!
5. I was just a poor, scared little girl!
The staff wheeled me in and immediately started jabbing at me. They had to prick my fingers. They had to jab my veins to draw blood.
I screamed and cried a lot.
One of the big problems was that they weren't able to find a vein. So they had to jab and rejab and all with no luck.
I think the screaming and frustration got to them, because they eventually stopped trying.
I had to have surgery to reset the arm, so I did need to have an I.V. I'm sure they were all looking forward to my screaming as they did some more jabbing.
When they stuck in the I.V. needle, it was like they had hit a geyser. Blood spurted out and onto the floor.
Too late, they had achieved success.
I woke the next morning with toys by my bed and my arm in a cast. Having mostly forgotten the trauma of the night before, I began to think I should get put in the hospital more often.
And then, for the icing on the cake, I got Jell-O for breakfast!!!
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