Dear D.,
We considered route options after I spent another morning and evening white-knuckling the steering wheel. The trip to and from the infusion suite lasted more than two hours from inevitable traffic embolisms all over the city. Even side roads swelled with clots of cars. We wondered if there were other travel routes. Maps did not encourage us. We had to make our way.
We wondered if there were other travel routes. Maps did not encourage us. We had to make our way.
By the time I reached the suite, sometimes my veins had sabotaged the whole trip. No good veins, no blood work, no infusions. Veins became both the road and the roadblock, more infuriating and essential than ratty city streets.
I dubbed you the designated hand-holder in my sickie kingdom while needles probed. I learned to squeeze
tight. I did not breathe, did not make a sound until the feeling of threading beneath the skin stopped. I yelped when an IV catheter broke through the vein, a high-pitched note like a clipped siren.
“Hush,” you said under your breath.
Years later, I learned what you told my parents: you thought I broke your hand or dislocated a knuckle during that episode. You never made a sound.
****************
Blood work is work.
The techs and nurses learn my quirks over the years, try to accommodate me. They knot the tourniquet over my pushed-up sleeve instead of directly on the skin. The nurse and I take turns poking at emerging veins.
“There’s a fatty. Go here,” I say.
“I don’t like the location,” she says. “It will roll. What
about this one?”
“That’s so small. It’s the smallest one. The needle will break through.” I feel my heart rate change. Side streets were not available detours.
“Probably not. Bet I can hit it. It won’t break through.”
Her confidence wins me. I can’t get paper work or medications I need without the blood test, without trying for veins. I grab your hand, threading my fingers through yours as I feel a butterfly threading my arm. She wiggles the needle under the skin. I know the outcome.
“No good?”
“The vein is good – I hit it. I’m in. But there’s not enough blood coming for what we need. You’re so dehydrated.”
I glance down.
“I can’t take that movement under the skin with the
needle anymore. Pull out and stick again.”
“If you say so.”
I watch the silver pull out. Barely a dot of blood follows.
“You’re so dehydrated that you’re not bleeding.”
“Let’s try again. Maybe it was just that vein.”
Maybe traffic will part like the Red Sea during rush hour on the drive home.
“Got any ideas?” she asks, eyes scouring the terrain for where to go.
“Try any vein you want. I’m not helping this time.”
Your fingers wriggle, readjusting to grip again, already anticipating the stick as much as I do. She’s a good nurse with a fairly painless entry. Once the needle moves back and forth under the skin, I end it. I’m wimpy and okay with that.
“No, that one’s just as bad, or else you would get some blood flow by now.”
“I’m sorry. I could get another oncology nurse to try it.”
The needle pulls out, bloodless. Your hand releases with perfect timing. If I hurt you, you never say. Your eyes and mouth stay as silent as your palms. Hushed.
“No, it’s not you because you actually hit the veins. If you couldn’t nail a vein, then I would try with someone else. But today seems to be me. I don’t feel dehydrated, but maybe I’m not paying attention.”
I did not say, my body and I maintain the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy even though it doesn’t work very well. I did not say, I taught myself how not to feel.
I say, “I’ll drink more next time. I can come back tomorrow.”
On the drive home, traffic hemorrhages, clots, redirects its pulsing, alternatively thins, thickens, rushes to wait. This is a city where some drivers consider red
lights optional. My grip on the wheel tightens, whitens to my fingertips.
At home, I pull two gauze pieces from non-bleeding non-wounds. I’m tired at the end of the day, cooked from fruitless stress. My knuckles glare at me, a reddening mess of inflammation.
On only one piece of paper, I want a map of feasible roads and feasible veins.
****************
I wake early the next morning. I chug water and read until we’re ready to leave. If we go now, we beat morning rush hour. I bring a gallon of water with us in the car so I can sip.
Thirty minutes into the drive, my bladder screams. I try to keep a foot on the pedal as I involuntarily hunch. I pull off the main city artery to a fast food place.
“What are you doing?”
“Hopefully not wetting myself. Sit there.”
I run with my thighs pressed together. My long winter coat covers my ridiculous walk. When I pull on the door to no avail, a worker in uniform sees my distressed face.
“Nah! Not open! You uhrly.”
I grab the handle, yank compulsively. The door rattles. My bladder is decidedly unappreciative. I bring one leg up in a squeeze.
“Ladeeeeee!” Both hands fly above the worker’s head while his lips purse. The universal “what the fuck don’t you understand” sign. I’ve been served.
I run to the car in full gotta-pee run, realizing the drizzling rain is cold and a strong suggestion to my suggestible bladder. A mere block away, an abandoned building stands, once tall, majestic, busy; now a sturdy shell but useless.
“Where are we going? There’s nothing here.”
“There’s privacy. I know what I’m doing.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m finding a way to go.”
I drive into the forgotten lot of a forgotten building. I’ve never been this close. Parked next to it, I see the building’s width is enormous and feel reassured.
I reach for the tissue box on the back seat, grab a wad. I sit in the driver’s seat unbuttoning my coat, unzipping my jeans.
The scenario clicks for you.
“No. You’re not.”
“Got other options to go?”
A groan.
“Just sit here and don’t come out. I mean it. I’ve done this before under other emergency conditions.”
I am not dehydrated.
“I’ve got a way.”
I am practical and ridiculous.
I shut the door, stalk toward the rear tire closest to the building. Under my coat, I ease my jeans and granny panties to my knees as I descend into a wide-legged squat. I try to disperse my weight evenly across the soles of both feet. My nose hovers two inches from the treads. I pull my coat up and around my hips to create my own stall while I finger the treads, carefully examining a tire problem that does not exist.
I am very much not dehydrated.
This better be the goriest blood test ever.
I consciously choose to relax while gripping the tire with both hands. I hear the first splats of a stream against decrepit concrete. I’ve chosen an exceptionally good spot: urine floods downward toward the uneven opening of a pothole about five inches away, pooling there. Bereft motor oil stains make broken, shifting rainbows as urine steams through them.
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