Jonny Numb

When I was just a wee Numbling, I didn’t have a problem with getting blood drawn. Whenever the doctor needed it, I all but shrugged it off and had no sense of squeamishness toward the sight of the needle-stick, nor the crimson lifeforce it pulled into the syringe.

I thought I was some sort of hotshot, yes indeed!

“My blood? Pfft. I look at my blood all the time!(?) Do your worst, doc! [YAWN]”

Flash forward several decades, and my 43-year old self can’t handle the sight of blood.

Actual, real-life blood, that is (the stuff in movies is fine).

A recent trip to the doctor’s office (coughed up some blood; had two instances of irregular heartbeat – all in the same day) found me having my chest dry-shaved to get set up for an EKG (which showed normal results), a prescription for Omeprazole sent to my local pharmacy (to rule out – or rule in – an ulcer as the culprit for the blood), and a trip to a side-room to have blood drawn.

As a bit of perspective/backstory, I’ve been going to my family doctor since the late 1980s (I’m old!). While the physician who founded the practice is no longer at the location I visit, this is the place I’ve been going my entire life (even after I moved up to the Harrisburg area and the drive became less than convenient).

When it comes to certain things – certain changes, let’s say – I’m quite the foot-dragger.

But the point of this biographical detail is: for all the years I’d been going to the practice, I’d never been sequestered in the aforementioned side-room to have blood drawn – it was a completely new experience.

A large refrigerator hummed to the right of where I was seated. The girl who took my vitals at the start of my visit returned to bind my arm and poke around for a formidable vein.

Easy, right?

Poked once. Nothing.

Poked twice. Nothing (but she attempted to move the needle around for good measure in an attempt to get something – anything – out of my reluctant arm).

Reinforcements were called in. This time, they gave my left arm a rest and started in on the right.

I kept making a tight fist because I thought it would help, and nobody told me to stop making one, so I was probably turning red in the face as a large vein stood out on my forehead (in hindsight, maybe they could’ve stuck a needle in that instead).

Third poke. Another failure.

“Are you hydrated?” they asked.

I flashed back to the bagel and coffee I’d had for breakfast, considered the time (3:30 in the afternoon), and uttered a confident “No.”

“I swear I’m alive,” I told the attendants, trying to lighten the mood. “I swear there’s blood pumping through my veins!”

Meanwhile, beneath my pale skin, my veins looked unimpressed at this declaration.

But I was beginning to fancy myself a vampire in need of a snack (preferably something that would boost my blood…sugar). It certainly felt like the 2 folks who’d tried to complete the task were regarding me with skepticism.

The young man who’d performed my EKG gave one final attempt, seeming to isolate a pinch-sized patch where a needle could-would-should hopefully strike crimson gold.

And strike, it did!

You could feel the collective sigh of relief fill the room, as the attendants wiped away sweat and reassured themselves, silently, that the individual who’d taken four jabs to produce an acceptable blood sample was, in fact, human.

I exited the practice with the two elastic straps tied to my arms like some desperate junkie, and a tiny heart monitor affixed to my chest to track any abnormal activity for a week-long period; it even has a button I can press when I notice irregular heartbeats (or any other concerning activity).

My left arm, however, looks like the infant stages of Jared Leto’s smack-induced disaster area from Requiem for a Dream.

Last Wednesday, a co-worker exclaimed, “What happened to your arm?!”

Coincidentally, a separate incident several years ago saw a nurse trying – and failing – to get an adequate blood sample via the finger-stick method…which led to several bruised and bloodied fingertips by the time the ordeal was over. (Chalk it up to the cold temperatures and just-coffee I’d ingested that morning.)

I’m not a vampire, I swear!