Friday, June 12, 2009

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??

6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Woops...guess you can't edit comments on this thing. But that made me laugh out loud. Comedy gold, I tell you....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Priceless! I've put my foot in my mouth more times than I care to remember but that was
    a real BEAUT! I have to introduce her to my
    cock-eyed gynecologist.

    ReplyDelete
  4. of COURSE this would happen to you!
    what was that story about the guy you were interviewing once (with the crazy teeth) and could barely keep it together?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Remind me to tell you a story about how I ranted and raved at a lady (that I couldn't at the time "see") about accusing her to "get up and do it yourself you lazy blah blah blah... only to find out she had NO ARMS.

    ReplyDelete