Well, in addition to cancer, my dear dear husband has a little thing known as trypanophobia/ hemophobia. That would be a fear of needles/blood draw. I used to joke and give him a hard time about it, because I honestly thought he was just being a little dramatic, but I will publically take that back. :-) It’s not that he doesn’t like them, or gets scared it’s that he really has a phobia and his body physically reacts when he needs blood taken which usually results in him either passing out, vomiting, or going pale (almost my Irish level of pale) and sweating. As you can imagine, between chemo and blood work this has created a whole separate challenge. The good thing is he does have the port in, so they can get blood from that and not have to take it from his arm every time, but even still, he sees that needle or knows he has to give blood and it’s all over.
Tonight, I was doing some research online to see if there were any tips or tricks on how to help combat this issue. No joke, he was getting queasy reading over my shoulder next to me, the very thought can make him have a reaction. Luckily, he doesn't take himself too seriously and makes lots of jokes about it all and usually has the nurses cracking up.
Anyway, he did some blood work today (see above paragraph to take a guess at how that went) and the counts were low which is expected for a week out of chemo. We will know more tomorrow and next week on his blood work when we meet with the doctors. So maybe he’s not great with needles and dealing with blood, but he’s totally crushing chemo and if I had to pick between the two, I pick chemo!
Tonight, I was doing some research online to see if there were any tips or tricks on how to help combat this issue. No joke, he was getting queasy reading over my shoulder next to me, the very thought can make him have a reaction. Luckily, he doesn't take himself too seriously and makes lots of jokes about it all and usually has the nurses cracking up.
Anyway, he did some blood work today (see above paragraph to take a guess at how that went) and the counts were low which is expected for a week out of chemo. We will know more tomorrow and next week on his blood work when we meet with the doctors. So maybe he’s not great with needles and dealing with blood, but he’s totally crushing chemo and if I had to pick between the two, I pick chemo!