1/29/08 Health Day

I know, I know...you're still waiting for All Star highlights. I'm working on it. It's taking a while because I don't want to forget a single little detail. Future generations of hockey fans will depend on my personal live account of my weekend, and I need to get it just right.

In the mean time...

I'm back at work, and it's Health Day! Ye Ol' Company is tired of our general lousy health costing them so much money, so they've started a new campaign where if you agree to a health screening and follow-up health appointments, then they'll give you a discount on the insurance premiums. (They want to do BMI and blood pressure checks to figure out how many of us are statistically likely to kick the bucket here at work, thus lowering the amount of toilet paper and coffee stirrers that the company needs to supply). Normally, this whole thing would make me nervous, because it smacks suspiciously of a doctor visit, and I do not like doctors and their overwhelming tendency to stab me with shots and needles. But this is just my company pretending to be a doctor, and I figure that the worst thing they could do was take my blood pressure, so I wasn't overly concerned. I filled out their little healthy living questionnaire about how many servings of vegetables I eat each week (does candy corn count?), and when my last physical was, and how often I juggle machetes while playing hopscotch down the middle of the interstate, and then bebopped my unsuspecting self down to the room where the screenings were. (They had told me that I needed to fast starting at midnight for my cholesterol check, which in hindsight should have tipped me off to the fact that they had something nefarious in store for me, but I just didn't put two and two together).

Anyway, when I got down to the screening room, a very helpful group of people dressed in scrubs weighed me and measured my height and gave me a HIPPA privacy notice, and it was all good. I was kinda enjoying the whole thing since it gave me a chance to get away from the phone for a few minutes. Then they sat me down in a little chair for my blood pressure check. Only first, they just needed to run a "quick little cholesterol test". So instead of strapping the little arm cuff on me, the nurse very unexpectedly pulled out...a giant needle! And I've got a pretty strong phobia about needles, so I unexpectedly punched her in the nose and bolted from the room.

Well, not really. But I gave it some serious consideration, because the needles? We are not friends. Nuh-uh. No way. The nurse may have sensed this by the way I started shrieking, so she grabbed my hand in her evil nurse vice-grip so that I couldn't get away. Not to worry, they only needed to gently prick my finger (which in nurse-speak translates to going to stab me in the finger with the giant freaking needle). I would barely feel it. (People always think that the problem with needles is that it's going to hurt. "This won't hurt a bit" they say. I don't care about the pain. It's the needle piercing my flesh that gives me the willies. Hit me in the head with a hammer if you want my blood. Just don't jab me with the needle).

The nurse, perhaps fearing a phychotic episode, loosened her grip while she waited for me to quit hyperventilating. She even started telling me about her yoga class that she used to take because it was so calming. I wasn't letting my guard down for a second, but she also wasn't holding the needle anymore, so I was cautiously optimistic. Maybe nurses that aren't actually in doctor's offices can't stab you against your will. Maybe in an office setting, they have to acquiesce to your wishes of not having a steel point jabbed into your tender finger flesh. Maybe she forgot about stabbing me. (That's me. The eternal optimist). Things were actually looking up as she got rolling on her "They joys of yoga" speech, and when she turned to ask the nurse next to me if she had ever taken a yoga class, I actually looked over to hear the other nurse's response. And that was the exact second when she whipped the needle out from behind her back and stabbed my unsuspecting finger. She had the needle gone again and was busily squeezing drops of blood out by the time I figured out what had happened. I made the obligatory threats and whimpering noises, but in reality, that was probably the best way for her to get what she needed, which was namely, my blood. Her only mistake was trying to do the blood pressure test immediately after, because I was so worked up that the cuff almost flew off and shot around the room with all the pressure I had built up in my preparation for fight or flight. She tried it a couple of times to see if my heart rate would ever drop back below 200,000 beats per second, but I was having none of it. I prefer to stay on high alert for several hours after any needle situation, even if it does report to my company that I'm ready to stroke out at any possible minute.

Stab me once, shame on you. Stab me while distracting me with a silly story about your yoga class in the name of health and wellness, well...shame on you again.