For those who want to know

I just came home from the wound clinic. On the 28th of this month they will do an angiogram on me. I managed to convince the doctor who is doing it, that putting me to sleep is safest for all concerned. He believed that coming at a terrified, phobic retired soldier, with a big needle, may not be a great idea. My wife pointed out (on the way home) that I could just be tied down for a couple of hours. I didn't think of that at the office but I'll let arrangements stand.


Here's the reality:
1. I am terrified and phobic
2. I am brain damaged (hypoxia in the lower portion) from a previous problem
3. My friends have learned that 23 years of training don't disappear just because you're 60 years old. (Don't startle me, I now react faster than I think)

It takes all of the control I can muster to let a lab tech take a sample. I used to watch the puncture and blood fill the little tube. Now I Turn my head AND close my eyes.

What got my attention mostly was this doctors inability to appreciate the extent of my fear. He got hung up on the technical (It's just a needle I stick into your groin...) and was completely incapable of see from my perspective. It was only after I included the possibility of damage to his wrist, arm or shoulder that he started listening.
Why?

From the beginning

I get yelled at a lot, by people who love me, because of things I do, or don't do. I'm scared, really scared, for the first time in my life. For anybody that knows me and what I've done that's quite a lot to say. I'm scared  because of what happened in the fairly recent past and I still remember it. The "Shit Happens" argument doesn't work because that's what I'm scared of. Shit happening again. I still remember my hallucinations, being woken up from coma to ask if I wanted morphine to stop the pain of having some tubes pulled out of my chest. The blinding pain of arterial blood samples taken at every shift change. Sitting around for a year and a half wondering where the missing hard drive I backed myself onto was lost and what was on it. I still remember the day I woke up and saw my wife and daughter standing next to my bed, trying to talk to them and finally realizing they couldn't understand a word I said because I lost my language. Losing 77 pounds and being so weak I couldn't hold my head up, let alone wipe my own ass. Waking up in the middle of the night thinking I was a prisoner and trying to escape. (I got as far as the floor in a bloody, shit covered mess.) The 3 headed dongle that hung out of my neck for dialysis and had to be changed three times due to infection. (Incidentally it was an NP that got me off that. My doc gave me 10000:1 odds of getting off dialysis.) 

I know what I need to do. But damn, don't preach at me. I'm still terrified.