Friday, October 14, 2011

Hemophobic madness

She walked in bearing about five test tubes, who in their right mind would be happy to see test tubes? Okay, maybe my 15 year old self would raise her hand, the one who could balance chemical equations like it was nobody's business and who was always excited during chem lab and could titrate the heck out of sodium bromide! Well, my not-so 15 year old self was apprehensive, although in reality all things considered, I was pretty calm, how could that be?

Warned the lab tech about my not so colorful history with drawing blood, no not the kind of method used by blood sucking vampires, this was actual blood-work! It is strange, I mean being a past blood donor and all, that I could be averse to the idea of letting them take a tiny sample of my blood. It may have started a few years ago, after a few faintish incidents incidents involving above scenario and this was in India where they are pretty conservative with the amount of blood they draw almost like Dexter and his slides, it probably has something to do with all the malnourished patients they get!

In any case, here they almost take enough to call it a minor donation, I mean really? Biology wasn't my major, but from what I have learnt owing to my great commitment to all the three CSI's for a very long time, is that a tiny sample can reveal everything about you, including where you are born and which year, God forbid that they do such a kind of analysis on me, so I reckon a routine lab test should not need so much. The lab tech was pretty cool, trying possibly to distract me, asking what I was doing for the weekend, in a tone that suggested she wished she could join me! while I went on about the pumpkin festival at half moon bay, one that I wasn't even going to.

While we discussed on the intricacies on growing pumpkins and if they would be carved or not, it was all done in a matter of minutes, in all this I may just have conquered one of my fears (fingers crossed) and not to diminish the fact that this came with a 12 hour fast.