"Reed."
"Wayne?" asked the sister. "Yes."
"414983," I stated, confident that my U.R. number was still correctly entrenched in my memory.
"Just a small jab," she warned.
Outpatient blood tests were taken on the second floor at the Alfred Hospital. It was just before lunch on a Wednesday. I knew that no treatment was to be given that day, because I was barely one week out of hospital, and the purpose of the test was to determine how far my blood counts had risen. It would be quite dangerous to administer the chemotherapy to a system already sparse in blood components.
I watched as the tourniquet was released and the blood streamed silently into the syringe. My right arm was used because it had, to that date, retained its productivity. With the application of the band-aid, the waiting game began. My mother and I had somewhere between two and five hours to fill in before I was to be seen by one of the specialist team.
During this time my blood would be processed, and the reading phoned up to the second floor clinic. Often we would buy some lunch, and wander across into Fawkner Park where many other: would be seated. Here you could enjoy calmness and the warmth of the sun.
Nagging at the back of my mind was the loss of school time. I guess that every day had to be tackled by itself, because this is how others around me viewed the situation. In casual moments, I allowed my imagination to ponder my future, but I knew that I had little control over it at that time.
faffajane
Pro 
Hugs x