monday at the doctor's office
i don't mind shots. i really don't. second round of hepatitis B vaccination today.
i walked in after taking a nice trip to the metropolitan market, filled with drool over my recently purchased sundried tomatoes and basil for that delectable spread that IS tomato-basil cream cheese.
it was the first time in awhile that my mom didn't come into the doctors office with me. i flew solo today. usually she goes in there to chat it up with my doctor, a family friend, but the nurses do shots, so there was no reason.
it was a nurse i didn't recognize, rather young, looked as if she possibly had a minor self esteem problem, but whatever, who doesn't?
so i took off my jacket, everything was normal, pulled up my sleeve, looked away so that the needle was vaguely in my peripheral vision. (i do that so as to not put too much pressure on the nurse, but also like to see what's going on.) she took a peculiarly long amount of time to aim the needle, but it went in without much pain, so that was good.
but when vaccine begins to trickle down your arm, that's not too good.
she didn't really say anything, and i couldn't really see what was going on, but when she lifted up the syringe, i could tell that the needle was still in my arm. well that's odd...
then my arm produced quite a bulbous drop of blood in a very short time. she couldn't find a band-aid, and went in another room to get one. i examined the situation, tried to stop the blood from moving too far down my arm, and just sat there, a bit puzzled.
and that was that. i thought about asking her what happened, but decided not to embarrass her much more.
so i got in the car, told my mom what happened, and she said that she probably just didn't tighten the seal.. or something. rookie mistake. but i was still concerned that oxygen had been injected straight into my bloodstream.
so everything was fine for the first few minutes, i turned on the KEXP to make myself forget about it. obviously my arm didn't hurt that much because only a minute amount of vaccine had probably reached my muscle.
and as soon as we reached stevens street, i contracted a sharp pain in the exact location of my jugular. i began some sort of silent panic attack. i was wincing, my eyes were filling with tears, and i tried to massage my neck to prevent that injected foreign material from flowing into my brain.
the hair was obstructing my face. my mom was too busy trying to get rid of her hiccups to notice that i was dying.
as i walked to the doorstep of my house after the pain subsided, i made a firm decision on two things.
that bjork on the radio would have been the perfect soundtrack to my death.
tomato-basil cream cheese didn't seem quite so important anymore.
i walked in after taking a nice trip to the metropolitan market, filled with drool over my recently purchased sundried tomatoes and basil for that delectable spread that IS tomato-basil cream cheese.
it was the first time in awhile that my mom didn't come into the doctors office with me. i flew solo today. usually she goes in there to chat it up with my doctor, a family friend, but the nurses do shots, so there was no reason.
it was a nurse i didn't recognize, rather young, looked as if she possibly had a minor self esteem problem, but whatever, who doesn't?
so i took off my jacket, everything was normal, pulled up my sleeve, looked away so that the needle was vaguely in my peripheral vision. (i do that so as to not put too much pressure on the nurse, but also like to see what's going on.) she took a peculiarly long amount of time to aim the needle, but it went in without much pain, so that was good.
but when vaccine begins to trickle down your arm, that's not too good.
she didn't really say anything, and i couldn't really see what was going on, but when she lifted up the syringe, i could tell that the needle was still in my arm. well that's odd...
then my arm produced quite a bulbous drop of blood in a very short time. she couldn't find a band-aid, and went in another room to get one. i examined the situation, tried to stop the blood from moving too far down my arm, and just sat there, a bit puzzled.
and that was that. i thought about asking her what happened, but decided not to embarrass her much more.
so i got in the car, told my mom what happened, and she said that she probably just didn't tighten the seal.. or something. rookie mistake. but i was still concerned that oxygen had been injected straight into my bloodstream.
so everything was fine for the first few minutes, i turned on the KEXP to make myself forget about it. obviously my arm didn't hurt that much because only a minute amount of vaccine had probably reached my muscle.
and as soon as we reached stevens street, i contracted a sharp pain in the exact location of my jugular. i began some sort of silent panic attack. i was wincing, my eyes were filling with tears, and i tried to massage my neck to prevent that injected foreign material from flowing into my brain.
the hair was obstructing my face. my mom was too busy trying to get rid of her hiccups to notice that i was dying.
as i walked to the doorstep of my house after the pain subsided, i made a firm decision on two things.
that bjork on the radio would have been the perfect soundtrack to my death.
tomato-basil cream cheese didn't seem quite so important anymore.