deeples

Man, I don’t mind saying that I’m afraid of actually admitting that I’m finally starting to feel better. It may randomly make people turn into pillars of salt or the sky to rain down frogs upon us.  It just seems too good to be true that maybe the iron infusions are finally starting to work?  That I finally got a good night’s sleep (oh, what a difference that can make). That even though last Friday’s infusion was the worst yet….  I don’t have any…not one…single…hive.

BLASPHEMER!!!!!!!!!!

NOW I WILL MAKE YOUR FINGERNAILS GROW SIDEWAYS AND YOU WILL BE REQUIRED TO FAX EVERYTHING YOU DO TO OTHER PLACES NOT IN THIS STATE EVEN THOUGH YOU ALWAYS SCREW UP THE FAX MACHINE AND IT HAS AN ESPECIALLY TRICKY PROCESS WHEN DIALING LONG DISTANCE!!!!!

See?  That’s totally what I was worried would happen.

At the infusion on Friday, they had to go back into the same vein they used a few weeks ago, but a little further up.  Since, as I may have mentioned, iron is toxic and a poisonous black tar that little demon nymphs scrape off the underbellies of iron-eating worm devils in the fiery pits of hell, my vein hated this revisiting very much.  And for 2 hours I whimpered and cried and moaned and moved the hot rice bags this way and that way because the heat wasn’t helping much and the pressure of the bags was excruciating on my already throbbing hand.  I don’t know because I haven’t personally experienced it – but I would bet that being bit by a snake feels about like that.  A big nasty poisonous snake.

The nurse, who was so pregnant I thought she would actually go into labor there in the room with us, felt terrible about how much it hurt and realized she shouldn’t have gone into the same still irritated vein and offered at least 10 times to remove it and find another vein.  But I was worried about the time… we had very little time left to finish the infusion and pick The Baby up from daycare… and I couldn’t bear going through the reinsertion of the IV, floating the catheter, etc. (which is admittedly hard to do on me because I have very bendy veins and they get stuck on the vein walls — and HEY, TOO BAD if this is making you queasy because at least you are just reading it and don’t actually have a catheter jammed up against your vein-wall while a very pregnant young nurse gets more and more nervous in a room that smells like diapers and soup.  So… there. I guess I told you.)

Anyway, at the end a different nurse came in and shut the machine off and decided to just let the rest of it drip in via gravity and then was extremely surprised when THAT DID NOT WORK.  I wanted to tell her that things that must be scraped with long pointy sharp claws off the underbellies of devil worms don’t really FLOW nicely the way you want them to. They have to be forcibly pushed into a human body.  But I was too busy sniffling and trying not to look at the bag to share my wisdom with her.  So, instead she just squeezed the bag a bunch of times and repeated 5 or 6 times that, “HUH, this usually works” and my hand started to swell… and turn red….  and when she finally pulled the IV out, I yelped.  I just couldn’t help it.

By Friday night, my hand was so painful and big and swollen that I thought we were going to have to have my wedding band cut off at the ER… I iced it and took left over pain killers… and hoped for the best.

And every day it’s gotten better –  I can type and make a fist,now.  We did get the ring off with ice and Pineapple Shimmer lotion and I only have a tiny bruise for my troubles.  I only have one infusion left on Friday and then hopefully good will finally come from bad, you know?  The iron will do it’s thing and sink into my bone marrow and start making the big, puffy, ruby-red blood cells that it’s supposed to make instead of the small pale pink ones it’s making now… and I… well, I plan to become a super hero and fight crime and injustice, bring peace where there is tyranny and if all goes as planned Gerbera daisies will shoot out of the ground wherever I walk.

Or, at the very least, I won’t have to keep the window down in my car so I don’t fall asleep while I drive and smash my face against the stearing wheel anymore.

Totally worth it.