Paradoxically Yours...

Grievously Galling

(prompt: 'sharp' 1/12/2017)

Doctors and hospitals have featured largely in my life in recent months, resulting in the unwelcome invasion of countless blood tests, plus cannula insertions for ease of supplying pain medication and antibiotics (and anaesthetic purposes, too). These charmers come to you via syringes and drips (no dear, I'm not talking about the hospital staff. Although, there was that one... and then that other time when... ). Consequently I have become unhappily familiar with 'sharps'.

'Sharps' you ask? That's the name for needles, designed to leave the patient wondering why 'they' would use such simplistic terminology in an industry drowning in devilishly difficult and unpronounceable names, like my latest procedure to rid my world of a monster gallstone I lovingly named Ayers Rock. It's called an ERCP - and please take careful note - even the medicos don't want to pronounce the full name that goes a little like this -

Endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography.

They avoid writing the name in full - possibly because spelling is close to the art of handwriting in the medical curriculum, and most otherwise highly trained medicos fail constantly in THAT department. (As you find when you steam open the sealed envelope with your test results, and then can't read a thing! If it's not the language, it's the so-called handwriting. And when it's all neatly typed out, it's most definitely knee-deep in impossible medical terminology with a large sprinkling of Latin. And WHO knows what that says?)

I haven't yet mentioned that many nurses and other blood-letting types have great difficulty in nicking off with my blood. It wasn't always this way. Once I was most generous with the stuff - but that was then, and this is now. And now these well-matured and experienced veins of mine know exactly what is coming when a needle approaches. They have two major evasive actions - drop and hide - OR - dance. It's the truth. My veins have totally taken over from my feet, and can trip the light fantastic at the tiniest glint of a needle. (Should see the problems I have mending!)

One young blood lady at our local clinic has it all sorted. "A butterfly needle is what you need," she cheerfully states and proceeds to take up to five phials of blood if that's what my Doc has requested. It's still sharp on the inward journey, but done in a flash - simple as... It's a mystery!

There was this one time when my laughter threatened to flood out like a burst water pipe, or ruptured main artery or similar. It was the time when a little Asian doctor gave me several injections over a short period of time, and every time, as he tightly held my arm and plunged his 'sharp' into me, he'd say, 'Sting-ng-ng-ng-ng-ng-ng-ng'. He sounded exactly like a harpsichord or similar, vibrating lengthily. And sting? As compared to a mosquito bite, for instance? Well-ll-ll, no. Hurt? YES!

'Sharps' have a habit of doing that.