Saturday, December 13, 2008

The phone call

I got a phone call yesterday that scared the wits out of me.

It was my clinical trial coordinator calling in reference to Tuesday's visit.

Like my mom, she takes forever to get to the point.

She starts out by saying "we got all your labwork back from your visit the other day..." and I'm thinking I'm about to find out something terrible. That maybe my liver enzymes were too high and I was going to be pulled from the trial. GET TO THE POINT! I wanted to scream.

Then she said "but something was wrong with your hemoglobin."

I'm enough of a hypochondriac that I know that means "blood".

I sit down with a "whump" as the air goes out of me and I collapse on the couch. I know I must have been stark white.

"Something's WRONG with my blood??" I ask.

"Yes, it was clotted and they couldn't perform the tests on it. It will have to be redrawn," she said.

"Whew!" was all I could say. "No big deal! Heh. When do you want me there?" I ask.

"Whenever you can make it up this way. Perhaps you need to come up to go Christmas shopping?" she said, trying to make the 4 hour round trip for a thimble full of blood sound appealing.

Little did she know that we are so freaking broke this Christmas that I guess I should bring my son with me for the trip so he knows that the gas money used to provide his *view* on the way is all he's getting from me this year.

I'm going back Monday and all I can say is Loreen better be back at work. She's the only one who can stick me and get blood the first try.

I knew I should have held out for making Novartis pay my gas money.

5 comments:

Synchronicity said...

just stopping by to say hello...hope you are doing well.

Suze said...

It took them until FRIDAY to figure out the blood was hemolyzed?!?!? Here, let me roll my eyes... Ah, that's better.
I am sure you are fine, GF. :-)
I know what you mean about Christmas. Our family drew a name for ONE gift among the adults, we're only buying all the children *A* gift, and our friends all made a promise to go out to eat once to celebrate and no gifts. My condolences to the retail industry this season. Can't help it, LOL.

Jeri Burtchell (TickledPink) said...

Suze, we've been drawing names in our family for many many years. It's part of our Thanksgiving tradition to draw the names for Christmas. And it's also part of the tradition for my sister and I to deduce who has whom well before Christmas day. We are rarely wrong.

It's hard with kids involved. My 10 year old, smart as he is, will not be able to comprehend why there's only one or possibly 2 things under the tree.

The tree is another story. Here it is, only 11 days until Christmas, and I'm just now taking a break from rearranging the living room in order to put the (fake) tree up. What's the point?

Guess I'm just not in the mood. :(

Suze said...

We put our tree up tonight! LOL
I wanted to put it up Thanksgiving weekend and it was DH's BD and he was not interested then. Just too busy until now. But a bit of Bah-Humbug, too, with the economy like it is. :-(
It IS hard for kids, though. We only have 4 to buy for though, and very few adults. Lean Christmas for us. Everyone usually buys for everybody, and it's not happening this year. Oh, well, our tree is beautiful!

Suldog said...

Shit. You don't deserve a scare like that. Nobody does, of course. God bless.