Our Eyes Locked as She Drew My Blood
This story took place at my local health clinic.
It's Wednesday. I've taken myself to see my doctor for a long overdue physical. I've had a few tele-health visits during the pandemic, but I'd be lying if I said that the virus was the only thing keeping me away.
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You see, I live with the fear that I might have something wrong with me. But, I fear being blamed for what I've got more than I fear the thing itself.
I know you may not understand.
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Last November, on the occasion of my 54th birthday, I wrote here in Julie's Pod about a painful health care experience that happened when I was in college over thirty years ago and haunts me still. How I went into the student health center seeking help for a bad bronchitis and left with the doctor's scornful voice thudding in my ears and a sheet of paper describing a 1,200 calorie diet.
Since that day in 1988, every single time I've needed to see a doctor (outside of an emergency) I've gone on a radical diet to lose 20-25 pounds first. Afterward, my body always found its way right back up to where it wants to be, and never higher. And although that shitty campus physician was appalled by my weight gain that day, I have never again weighed as little as I weighed that day in his office. If that story and my determination to loosen the grip of that memory resonates with you, read it here.
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On Tuesday of this week – the day before my long overdue appointment for my physical with my local health care provider – I'd taken myself to the lab to do the lipid panel she had ordered back in early 2021. I figured that now that I'm finally coming in she'll want to discuss these results, and so I'd damn well better have my blood drawn. My left forearm gets bandaged where the intern failed to find my vein. I wasn't mad. I get it. How else do students learn? A supervising phlebotomist easily filled the vial on his first try.
Now it's Wednesday, a day later. I've had my doctor's appointment, which went really well (I'll save that story for another time), and now I'm back in the lab, this time to give over four vials of blood. Today's technician is a bit standoffish, perhaps because I've intruded upon her lunch break by asking if she can fit me in rather than having to make an appointment. "Gimme a sec," she mutters. So I do. A few moments later she calls me back to the chair.
I get nervous thinking about my blood being drawn, but I know that if I breathe deeply I can settle myself. I also know that kindness matters – for the other person, for me, and for the universe – so as the technician stands with her back toward me and selects the four vials into which my blood will drain, I ask and find out that her name is Sam. I thank Sam for fitting me in. I chitchat. I joke that I already have a bandage on my left arm from yesterday's botched attempt.
"You came in yesterday?" Sam asks.
"Yeah." I say. "An old order from an appointment last year. I'd been putting it off."
Sam turns now and looks over at me. "What about your mammogram?" I'm a little caught off guard. I'm here to get blood drawn and this feels like it just got really personal. Her beautiful almond eyes loom large over her mask. I see flecks of gold. I see blue. I see fear. I can tell she's not judging me. So, I admit that I'm overdue for my mammogram, as well.
"Me too," she says.
"I get it," I say. I add, "I'm afraid."
"I'm afraid, too."
I roll up my right my sleeve. The gel from my pap smear makes my pants feel wet. I can sense that my blood pressure is still slightly elevated from the stress of a visit to the doctor. Yet all of a sudden I feel pulled toward these eyes in front of me.
"Tell me what you're afraid of." I ask Sam, gently.
"I feel some pain. I worry that it might be something." Sam whispers as she gently pushes into her breast.
"That must be scary," I say.
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Two weeks ago, on May 25, I was tootling around on Facebook and stumbled upon a post by my friend Meredith announcing that she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer. The purpose of her post was to urge everyone to never delay mammograms or any recommended screenings.
There are so many medical things that I need help with, including a knee still injured from when I began jogging early in the pandemic for which I now need a knee brace and pain reliever on many days, the effects of menopause, and blood sugar in the pre-diabetic range. But I also need a mammogram. My last was just over a year ago, and lately I've been kinda feeling a little twinge of something.
The cruel reality of Meredith's situation – a mother of a young son and a doctor herself bravely facing her situation, unlike my beloved father who could not bear to – pulled me out of my cave of fear and into the warm light of day. Meredith inspired me to reframe my thinking: I don't know what I might have, but I do know that I want to LIVE. Meredith is the reason that I scheduled that long-overdue physical with my primary care physician. Meredith is why I met Sam.
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Sam comes toward me with the four empty vials and sits on the rolling stool in front of me. I put my right wrist out on the padded arm that swings across my lap and look away as she finds the vein. To my relief, Sam is a pro. She quickly swaps in vial two, then three, then four. I feel the discomfort of the needle close to a part of my body that registers pain. But it's not too bad. Sam finishes and removes the needle.
We sit looking at each other. Sam in her blue phlebotomist gloves and white coat, me in jeans and a shirt that can easily stretch to accommodate a needle. My left arm begins to throb from the pneumococcal vaccine the nurse plunged into my shoulder a half hour ago.
I ask Sam if she has kids. She tells me she has three teens. I tell her I have two of my own.
"I lost my dad to prostate cancer," I whisper to Sam. "He was in pain but he wouldn't go to the doctor. And he even was a doctor." I add, "Aren't we lucky to have health care? And health insurance? And if we make that appointment, we get information, whereas right now we have no information, just fear." I try to appeal to objective things.
As I recount my father's tale and offer my advice to Sam, my stranger-friend, I realize that I am in the process of repeating the mistakes of a man who should have become a magnificent one-hundred-year-old, and perhaps would have had he not died at seventy-seven from a curable disease. I hear how confident and sure I am when telling Sam these truths that I have a hard time facing within myself. I decide to voice that realization aloud – that we find it easier to support others around their health needs than to convince or advocate for ourselves. Then an idea strikes: To help Sam, I need to ask her to tell ME why I should not be afraid.
Sam goes for it. She stares at me over her mask, her eyes wide now, and she whispers. "Trust God," she says. "Everything will be alright." I smile. I say thank you. I put my palms up and she puts hers up to meet mine. We intertwine our fingers, hers gloved, mine bare. We lock eyes.
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Sam stands and goes over to the little desk that holds all of her equipment. She begins to label my vials of blood. I push the padded arm away and begin to scootch out of the chair. She turns and looks at me.
"Can I text you when I've made my appointment?"
"Absolutely. I'll do the same."
And that's exactly what happened. We've had a couple text exchanges already as we navigate the various systems that stand between us and that mammogram we both need and dare I say want.
Sam and I. Two strangers in a medical lab. Bonded over fear, and maybe for life.
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What are you putting off when it comes to your health care? What do you want to commit to do? Who and what are you living for, who counts on you to be alive and well? Sometimes thinking about those others can make us overcome the fears within ourselves.
Did you notice how we two strangers were so kind to each other? How are you getting your kindness on with strangers?
Please tell me in the comments below!
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