Do You Need to Sit Down, Dear?

My husband is going to have to have surgery on his ankle.

This falls under the heading of BIG DEAL. He will be off his feet for three months and out of work for about five.

Somebody will have to give him blood thinner shots. The doctor looked at me and said, "You get to do it," when we were in his office Monday.

Yeah, right.

I am not a nurse. I do not deal with this kind of thing well. It stresses me and I can think of 100,000 things that will go wrong and not a single thing that will go right.

Yesterday the pharmacy at Kroger called and said we had a prescription to pick up. I had all my drugs but some of my husband's blood pressure medication is on auto fill, so I assumed that was what it was.

This morning I went in to get it.

The pharmacy tech grabbed a clear bag and tossed it on the counter. It was filled with needles. HUGE needles. Cow-sized needles. LONG needles. Needles from hell.

I knew immediately that this was the blood thinner stuff, even though we don't have the surgery scheduled yet. This little doctor fellow is in quite a hurry to do this, I guess.

The needles lay there. I looked at them. I started turning white. I grabbed the counter.

"Are you alright?" the pharmacy tech asked.

"Um. What are those?" I managed to ask. I clung to the counter, hoping my legs were going to hold me. Little black dots were starting to swim around my eyes.

She told me. Blood thinner.

"You don't look so good," she added. "Do you need to sit down?"

"We don't want that now," I stammered. "We don't even have the surgery scheduled." I paused. "And yes, I need to sit down."

She shrugged and said the prescription would be on file for a year, and pointed toward a bench. I hung on to my little buggy for dear life and rolled it to the bench, where I sat for a few minutes trying to collect myself. I did not pass out but I came awfully close.

I'm supposed to give my husband these shots. With needles that look like they should go into an elephant.

Hell will freeze over before that happens.

Anybody want to volunteer?