Long Sharp Metal Pointy Things .. .

The hematologist was very kind, but not very helpful, and going into his office was rather tramatic.

You see not only is his office that of a hematologist, but because he deals with alot of oncology (cancer) patients it is also a infusion center. And in the waiting room of his office is where they receive their infusions.

I have never seen anything so frightening or macabre.

Chairs with straps on the arms are lined up like airline seats and overhead hang IV bags of clear or lightly colored liquid which are connected to the patients seated in the chairs. These patients arms are held in place with the straps, and in and out of the whole set up weave nurses and techs Now, that in and of itself isn't too macabre but the way that the biohazard containers on the counters fill up with bloody lines and needles, the way the patients slump in the chairs, or look blankly out the window, the shuffling, uncertain steps those patients take when they get up and had to go to use the bathroom, are. It is beyond creepy.

After the creepiness out in the waiting area I went in to see the doctor and he was very kind, assuring me that I didn't need the kind of treatment his other patients were receiving but he also said that he wasn't really sure why I was there. Great. I had taken all my files down to him earlier in the week (well Mom took them after I signed all the darn privacy waivers so she could) and he looked at them and said that it wasn't low iron or low thyroid.

He says that the sinus tachycardia is not caused by anything he can help me with which means that I have to go to an internest. Because while sinus tachycardia isn't fatal, some of the things that cause it can be a tad nastier.

Moan.

Also, when they went to draw blood to test for other things, before actually he told me that he couldn't help me with anything, *ahem* my veins did not cooperate. So I got stuck, and stuck, and stuck, and stuck. The last place the tech tried was on the under side of my wrist and it did not tickle. See there's a nerve that lives there, the same nerve that would have been severely mangled by the nail driven into Christ's hand, was annoyed by the needle that they used on me. There's a reason the word 'excruciating' means ''out of the cross''. And I just got a light flick on that nerve. I don't know how He kept from screaming as they drove the nail into His hand.