Fear

[smokingboot]

So I have made another appointment for a blood test.

This has been hanging around for months. It'a about finding out if I am entering the menopause. Got no problems with that - never wanted kids, don't want them now - but I am very needle phobic. I have been getting better over the past couple of years, but I am still afraid. I have made an appointment to minimise waiting around, but I can already feel a fear starting. One has to fast for 10 hours beforehand, so it's not something you can just walk in and do; you have to be mindful.

Oh dear, I hate injections so much.

I have never had a blood test in my whole life, or at least, in my whole remembered life. My medical notes don't have records of a blood test, though I have been a vaccination/inoculation pincushion since I was very young. It's shocking that I have never given blood, but I just can't explain it. Injections hurt me, they really do, and I start to panic before I have one.

I am panicking now. Not a panic attack, or I couldn't write this. I am not one for such things. But I can feel a kind of weird bubbling in my stomach, a quiet nausea, and my eyes are beginning to fill with tears.

48 and never had a blood test, the doctor joked I must be very healthy. Truth is, I don't fall ill that much, and when I do, all I have to do is listen to my bod. If it says sleep I sleep, if it says eat I eat, if it says don't eat I don't eat. Sometimes stuff happens, but my body gets over it. I know I am lucky in that regard.

I would ignore this but I can't. My great-grandmother suffered from osteoporosis, and because I am small and thin (er...ish) the doc reckons it could be a possibility for me. And anyway, it's good to know what is going on.

Oh but I don't want to do this. The centre is always so crowded, from embarrassed STD patients to weary mothers with four or five children hanging off them like carrier bags full of scream. Nowhere for them to go, nowhere for me to hide.

I hate this whole thing so much. Tears and nausea have gone for now. Reckon some comforting soup and cheese will help sort this out.

Comments

[sarahfeeney.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Blood tests suck especially fasting ones - I know I've had several through my pregnancies. Just a thought - here in Coventry we have private folks who turn up and do it for a fee. (I think it might be about £30) it may be worth enquiring if that is a possibility just to escape the vileness of sitting in the hospital waiting?

Also if you do have to go the hospital you can emphsise how you feel about needles and perhaps ask if they will do it lying down??

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

*Hugs back* Hello! thank you for this suggestion, it sounds brill. I will enquire, if I have time.

Lying down is impossible. The rooms are crammed with people - I don't mean the waiting room, I mean the actual consultation room with whoever's doing the injection, there's desks and chairs and that's it. There are lots of people in there, so many you are scared someone's going to jolt your arm or the injector's arm.

I really must not think about this bit! I really will check out the private possibilities if I can.

[sarahfeeney.livejournal.com]

that sounds awful at least here in the midlands we get private cubicles! I know from experience of friends that when they have stressed how ill/nervous blood makes them the hospital has done it lying on a couch/bed for them.

I'd offer to send you a few vials of mine as I'm a well tried pin cushion but I suspect that wouldn't suit the doctors needs! xxxx

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

*Grins* thanks for the offer! When I told the doctor, he jammed my chair against the corner where no-one could nudge it. We couldn't do it though, because I had eaten three cherries the night before and he said it would ruin the results. Three cherries!