It's Midnight & I'm Not Famous Yet

      Shooting up!

            How I have come to hate it, the thought, the need. It’s hard trying to keep the vein from rolling, or slipping the needle in alongside it, or even at times right through the vein and blowing the whole thing. Never mind the whole tourniquet part. Too tight, not tight enough, slipping loose too soon, – it’s all bad... Then you start over. Maybe six, seven attempts while veins collapse if you even think about sticking it, all before you have success. Then there are the scars. Scar tissue, tracks, the arms of a junkie, it’s all part of the drama. Hard, dark areas permanently discolored from repeated uses, until they no longer work, and you are forced to find other sites, and before long your arms are a mess and you wear long sleeves even in summer, but even that doesn’t hide the tracks on the backs of your hands. Eventually you learn how to shoot up with either hand. But it all still sucks.

          Shooting up is something done alone, out of sight. It has to be, it’s embarrassing. People wouldn’t understand this kind of need.  A matter of life and death! It doesn’t matter because it is an instant social stigma. Try applying for a job with needle tracks. Try explaining it is not what they think. More bad things about shooting up, and it never ends.

            I hate shooting up, but I need to do it. Without it I would not be able to function at all too frequently. I hate shooting up, but it is necessary.

            If I didn’t, I would have died years ago.

            Before I learned how to shoot up, things were deteriorating bit by bit. My joints were becoming weaker, less flexible, more arthritic. Until I had reached adulthood this option wasn’t even available. The poor souls born afflicted with my disease now can start at birth, and hope to live a normal life. When I was born my parents were told not to expect me to survive adolescence.

            A few years ago, if you had been aware of the news at the time, you might remember the names of the few notable victims of my club: Ryan White, Ricky Ray and his brothers! Forgotten victims now, all too quickly part of the past no one wants to hear about. Epidemics past, no longer relevant except to the few of us remaining, and even we don’t know how, or why, or what, or when.

            Yet for a time, because of corporate greed, and public apathy, we were almost completely wiped out. Genetic genocide, I call it. No one cared then, and things have not improved since.

             Every two years I attend a special clinic and have to demonstrate that I can home infuse without difficulty. Legally I am certified to self-administer intravenous transfusions of Factorate, blood products to help control the bleeds that occur because my own blood lacks sufficient quantities of factor VIII  to clot properly. I have only 1% of the factor VIII necessary in my blood to clot normally. That means I am a severe case. There are moderate and mild cases too, but that is not much comfort to those families either.

             It has occurred to me since I began doing this that I will never understand why anyone would ever willingly stick themselves with needles if it wasn’t absolutely necessary for survival. Heroin and cocaine addicts are a mystery to me. This is no way to live, and yet I have to do it, or eventually it will kill me.

            Sooner anyway, it has been my hereditary burden from birth

            I have hemophilia.

Formats

Softcover

$14.99

$10.00

Hardcover

$24.99

$15.00

Softcover

$10.00