The Needle and the Damage Done

"This won't hurt a bit, Mr. Warner - oopsie!"

Just my luck.

On my exciting day off this week, I had a doctor's appointment and, since I'm an old-timer who subsists on pretzels and cheese, Doc always wants to check my cholesterol. That meant getting poked with a needle for a blood test. I had a nervous feeling when I saw I was assigned two nurses to poke me (which sounds like an adult film scenario - but believe me, the reality was far from sexy!), as it probably meant that one of them was a rookie getting on-the-job training by the other. Meaning, I was the guinea pig!

The two assistants practically salivated looking at my thin-skinned right arm, which has a big green vein as thick as the Hulk's jugular (when Hulk mad) and which, at a distance, kinda looks like England's massive M5 motorway right around Taunton.



"Wow, I won't even need a tourniquet for that vein!" the rookie said before poking me.

I have always had a fear that my big-veined arm would suffer the same fate as my mom's. During the second world war, she gave blood for the boys and had an inept nurse break off a needle in her arm - resulting in a big ugly clot that she always said made her look like a junkie. Guess I just joined the club, because now I have a big reddish-purplish, syphilitic scab there that looks like a junkie's dart board.

Like mother, like son.

Can't wait until the weather cools down so I can go back to long-sleeve shirts.