blood chemistry

My husband calls and tells me that the nurse is waiting downstairs. She’s going to get three whole vials of blood, he says. My sweet husband. He doesn’t mean anything by it, but it still scares me. But hey, if it’s a home diagnostic test, it probably doesn’t hurt right. I think about how outlandish this procedure would have been two years ago. A nurse pulling up to your house and changing into full protective gear in our family garage. I think about how she arrives the same way our takeout did last night: via motorcycle. 

Her name is Rema. When’s your birthday? Rema asks. Tomorrow, I tell her. A pause before I tell her again in a format more useful for her forms: 05/18/91. It’s not like I wanted her to greet me or anything, so why did I say that? Any symptoms? No, not really. Just a diabetic grandmother, uncle, and mother. Sometimes I wake up to pee at like 3 a.m. Is that alarming or is it a ghost? But it’s also because I down a whole glass of water before sleeping so I’m hoping it’s that and not diabetes. Oh, and getting old, I guess, I told the doctor over the phone. “You’re not that old yet,” she said. “Just get a check-up every year starting now” she added before hanging up.

I’ve been trying to figure out what is driving this fear of aging. I’ve joked a lot about botox to the point where it’s no longer funny. I also learned that Botox is actually BOTOX® in the same way that xerox is Xerox®. Maybe I’m just being histrionic. I think about everyone else who’s even just a day older than me and they still outweigh the number of people I know younger than me. For now. I remember a friend who told me that being a teacher can make you crazy. “Why?” Besides all the obvious reasons. He said: “Because you’re the only one in the room aging.”

It takes longer than I thought. Drawing blood. I try not to look at the thick needle sticking out of the crook of my elbow. But I do once, and I regret it. I see the blood squirting into the vial with every heartbeat. It makes me queasy. Why can’t my heart beat fast enough? I look towards a butterfly fluttering in my neighbor’s plants in the townhouse across from our own. I watch it move from plant to plant to plant. We’re still not yet done? We’ve only just started the second vial. I look across the road and the butterfly is gone. I close my eyes and focus on the sounds around me: the screaming bugs, the honking cars, and the barking dog.

It takes 24 to 48 hours for your results, Rema says, after she inserts the vials into her little blue cooler. Three vials of thick, viscous blood, with different colored caps. We’re done, she says, and turns away to get out of her protective suit. Okay, I say. Thank you. I go back into my house and close the door. I get the results in the morning the next day. My birthday. I call up my healthcard’’s hotline and talk to a random doctor. “You’re perfectly fine,” she tells me. “Your cholesterol and blood sugar are all within normal to good levels.” “Are you sure,” feeling kind of dumb. “Is there nothing I need to improve on?”

“Based on your blood chemistry, not really, but I guess if you’re concerned just eat healthily and exercise right. Take a test next year and happy birthday Ms. Potenciano.” She hangs up.

That’s a relief, I tell my husband, who’s slicing me a bit of birthday cake for breakfast. I look back at my life and pat myself on the back like a real self-satisfied chump. Good habits pay off I guess, I tell myself. Like working out five times a week and eating vegetables and shit. And the ice cream I get twice a month isn’t killing me just yet. Maybe I’m just manic. Maybe the family-inherited diseases will kick in next year. For once I’m happy to be alive because for a day there aren’t any consequences.

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birthday reads:
How the Philippines’ brutal history is being whitewashed for voters
Glazed by Spike Wong
Small world: Why we love tiny things
Lisa Donovan’s memoir called Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger
Re-read: The Crane Wife