Poor Mike.

His mother may have bone marrow deficiency...or something...

He was all dizzy and weak from the docters taking so much blood and marrow from him.

They wanted to see if he was compatable with his mother, and he is.

Poor Mike.

And he told be about the proceedure, with the six inch needle they drove into him to get his marrow.

It makes me cry to think about it, about him, about the long, sharp needle, the docters in their neat white uniforms and straight teeth, smelling of antibiotics and soap and blood, looming over him with their needles and their blades and vials...

It makes my heart flutter like a frightened bird, although it wasn't done to me and I wasn't there.

It makes a lump rise in my throat, an echo of all the times before.

I hate docters. I hate needles. I hate hospital and the smell, the smell. I hate the gauze they squeeze on your arm when they're going to shoot you up with something.

I hate it. I hate it.

I can't stand it.

It's a phobia of mine.

I don't think Mike realizes how much of a phobia it is for me. I've never really explained the full extent of what's been done to me (and why I hate needles and docters and hospitals so much).

He knows about my kidney. He knows about my uteri. He doesn't know how they did it, how they found it.

I don't think he knows because he was telling me in wicked detail what they were doing to him. If he saw me squeezed in the corner of the couch with my hand pressed over my face, phone at arms length, shivering, I'm sure he wouldn't have.

He's not mean.

But oh, the images of him, on the white paper and plastic, with the needle, and the docter, and the vials and the blood and the--

Phobias suck.

.

Rosie.

Before&After