Needles, Part One



After spending a significant amount of time in a hospital and then a nursing home, you become somewhat inured to having your body treated like pin cushion.  I was literally pricked daily, sometimes several times,  for about four months.  In Columbia Presbyterian they drew blood every day.  And then of course there's the IV.  An IV port is only good for a while; then it has to be replaced.  Now, I've always had veins that would make a vampire salivate.  They're big, fat voluptuous veins and all the nurses loved them.  That was until I went on Prednisone.  Among all the other lovely havoc it wreaks on your body, apparently it collapses your veins, too.  By the second or third week in Columbia, finding somewhere to stick me was increasingly becoming a challenge.  By the time I got to Silver Lake, finding a viable vein was dang near impossible.  So each time I was supposed to get stuck, I  usually wound up getting stuck three or four times.  And although most of my nurses were of the Florence Nightingale ilk, there was the occasional Nurse Ratched.  They positively enjoyed the poking and the prodding and the bleeding and the grimacing.  After a while it got so bad that Ron, a nurse in Silver Lake, had to start an IV port in a vein in my foot.  I kid you not!  So naturally I was waiting breathlessly (yes, I know: yet another poor choice of words) to be discharged so I would no longer have to worry about walking down the street and springing a leak.  Riiiiiiight.  Just before I left Silver Lake I was informed that when I got home I would have to test my blood sugar every day (by pricking my finger, of course) and if it was too high, I'd have to administer Insulin (by stabbing my belly, of course). They had been testing my sugar levels since Columbia.  I've never been diabetic, but as mentioned in an earlier post, Prednisone (there's that word again!) can make your blood sugar levels go all kablooie.  Kablooie is medical jargon for "messed up".  It was originally used by the great Jewish scholar and physician, Maimonides, after whom a rather mediocre medical center in Brooklyn was named.    He coined the term after watching his friend and sometime associate Louis slowly lose his marbles.  Louis, a gifted scholar in his own right and renowned short order cook and kabbalist, was affectionately known as "Kab-Louie" in their little shtetl*.  After years of playing the local lottery and never winning even one peso, Louie took to drinking.  Unfortunately he couldn't afford proper liquor and so became quite addicted to a home made concoction of his own, consisting primarily of  aged raisin wine and his Tante Rivka's toe jam. This elixir, as tasty and fragrant as it was, eventually caused poor Louie to go quite mad.  He could be observed all over town crowing like a rooster and singing obscure, old Russian folk songs (this behavior was particularly bizarre, since they lived in Spain).  One of his favorites was the beloved classic, "Don't tell Olga about Tatyana, or I'll smack you upside the head with my lizard." Okay, boys and girls, where was I?  Oh yes.  Prednisone induced diabetes.  Anyway, the day after I got to Chayie's house, a nurse showed up to show me how to use the glucose monitor and how to inject myself.  So for several months thereafter I checked my glucose a few times a day and stuck myself in the belly more often than not.  After I went on Coumadin, pretty much any time I injected myself a hematoma showed up.  After a while, my belly looked like an Appaloosa's hindquarters.  And I certainly didn't need that.  After all, it's long been established that I have perfectly wonderful hindquarters of my own.

*Shtetl = small European village.