Waiting again

I’m back to waiting. I sometimes think I spend half my time waiting.

Today I’m waiting for the delivery of some fence panels. The neighbour who’s building a wall dividing his garden from our small enclosed garden near our bedroom, has decided it would look better if we put some fence panels at the top to give extra height without reducing the light unduly in our garden. We’re happy enough about that, so yesterday we got off to choose some fencing that will look good with the existing fencing next to it. It will be delivered some time today. So now I’m waiting.

The hospital went reasonably well. My medication has been reduced rather than stopped. I will still have to go back to the hospital for another review. They’re happy about the statins.

While I was there they decided I should have a blood let session to check on my liver function.

What a mess they made of it. I warned them I always had difficulty giving blood. This is usual sufficient to cause them to take extra care but to have no problems. It didn’t work this time.

First he tried my left arm. He tourniqueted it up & went in. The vein moved as I’d warned him. He wriggled the needle around & eventually managed to get a couple of drops, not enough to fill one phial let alone the three required, before it dried up.

He tried again with the other arm. Tourniquet on, I clenched & unclenched my fist to encourage the blood to flow faster. He used a finer needle & in he went. Again the vein moved. Another assistant by this time had entered the blood room. She’d done two other people while he was working on my arm & he was still fighting. She took over, wriggling the needle, while he kept hold of my arm. Eventually she managed to get the needle in. The blood flowed. The phials filled up.

Now he had another problem. He couldn’t stop it bleeding. Eventually he managed to get it to a level he could plaster me up. I came out of the blood room feeling very bruised, hardly able to bend my elbows, making pushing myself in my wheelchair out of the room difficult.

I’ve just taken the plasters off this morning. I’ve now got two inside elbow joints of magnificent colour, ranging from yellows to greens to purples. I’m not surprised after all that struggle.

You now know why I abandoned all idea of becoming a blood donor, an idea that appealed to me as a teenager but got dashed the first time I had to have a blood test for something. On that occasion I ended up having both arms bruised at the surgery before they decided to send me to the hospital instead. There, after complaining about the mess the surgery had made, they finally managed to get enough to cover the bottom of the phial & just had to hope it was sufficient for all the tests. Otherwise I was going to be called back in to have my throat cut. That was enough for me.