A simple blood draw reminds me of my most embarrassing moment...

And this one is a doozy. Some of you know this, but others probably don't. I'd forgotten all about it until today, when I went to Dr. SH's office in LA to get a blood draw as part of my ongoing therapy while back in LA. I saw one of the technicians and it reminded me of the tests right before my diagnosis...and the HORRIBLE I-want-to-crawl-out-of-my-skin-and-run-away embarrassment I experienced.

And it was all my own fault.

Flash back to my pre-diagnosis days. I knew I had either MGUS or Myeloma, but thought it was probably the former as I exhibited no symptoms in my blood except the M-spike (i.e. my Beta 2 Microglobulin was normal, I wasn't really anemic, my Albumin was normal, I had no issues with Calcium, etc.).

But I had to get a bone marrow biopsy, and I was nervous. Speaking of which, I wonder why that one left no lasting mark, and yet I *STILL* have bruises from every single one they've done in Arkansas?

I had lunch with Jill before we went into the doctor's. I was pretty jumpy, as I wasn't looking forward to the visit. I had a couple of glasses of wine with lunch to relax a bit. Then we headed in.

Before I got the bone marrow, I had to get X-rays. Now bear in mind, I'm nervous, and have a couple of glasses of wine in me. I go into the X-ray room, and they take what seems like 500 X-rays (but was probably more like 30). I'm bantering a bit with the two female technicians to pass the time. Eventually, they have to X-ray my skull, so they stand me up against the wall and arrange the giant X-ray gun next to my head. They stand back about 50 feet and hit the zapper.

This is when I decided it was a good time for shtick. After all, they'd just zapped my brain.

I could go one of two ways...I could either flip my index finger against my lips and do the "abbidy-abbidy-abbidy" thing. Or I could cross my eyes and say "does everything look okay?" I decide for the latter, because the former would be over the top. Subtlety is my strong point, you see.

So the woman comes over, and I look directly at her and say "does everything look okay?" and she says "yes." I paused a moment, puzzled. I must not have been obvious enough with my crossed eyes. I summon up every effort to cross my eyes as goofy as possible and I stare directly at her from about a foot away and say "hey, you're not getting my zany cross-eyed shtick!!!"

It was at this point that I realized the woman herself was cockeyed. Not like a lazy eye but full-blown crossed eyes.

I was aghast. Fortunately, she was cool about it. But I was stuck in there another 15 minutes, trying not to laugh at how horrible the situation was (and failing). Can you imagine?

What price shtick??