Moon Walks and Vampires

On Moon Walks
20 years ago today, I made my first trek to the National Air & Space Museum in downtown D.C. I was spending the summer at my aunt and uncle's house in Virginia, and was mid-way through indulging myself in what would ultimately end up being a life-changing experience.

We had made several trips downtown in previous weeks - the first being for the not-to-be-missed 4th of July celebration on the National Mall - but we hadn't yet ventured to the Smithsonian museums on the mall's south side.

I certainly didn't recognize the significance of the day until my arrival (with hundreds of thousands of other people) at the air and space museum that day - the 20th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon. I touched a moon rock, gazed at real and replicated space craft and learned more about space in a few hours of reading every museum sign I could lay my eyes on than I had in all my nearly 11 years of life up to that point. It was, after all, only 3 short years after the Challenger disaster, my last real interaction with space, which had left me a bit skeptical and slightly bruised.

I remember feeling kind of important for being in a place so significant on the anniversary of such a great historical event. It was, ultimately, one of the things that gave D.C. such an incredible pull over my psyche. Standing in the middle of history was intoxicating - so intoxicating that it never quite left me, until I migrated back as an adult resident.

It's hard to believe 20 years - and so much more history - has passed. Today, as I listen to the recaps of the 40th celebration of man's walk on the moon, I can't help but reflect that for me, the lunar landing happened not on July 20, 1969, but on July 20, 1989, as I had the chance to re-live a piece of history in a city known for staging some of the most significant historical, political and social acts of the 20the 20th century.

That day, D.C. became my town.

On Vampires.
It surprises me, looking back, that the thing that terrified me most about my first surgery (at age 14) was not the surgery itself, or even the anesthetic (something I learned to fear with the next surgery, which left me in critical care on life support). Rather, my greatest fear was having my blood drawn and typed the week before surgery. It wasn't the needle so much as it was the fact that I had to sit and watch vials upon vials (or so it felt) of my blood leak out of my arm.

Today, as I journeyed to the hospital lab for my fourth blood draw in 12 days, I realized just how grateful I was that I go over the whole thing a long time ago. As it turns out, if one ends up with a blood clot while pregnant, one ends up spending a significant amount of time getting to know vampires phlebotomists on a first-name basis. I have one more draw this week until the doctors determine if I am medicated at the correct level. Then I get to repeat the whole process in 10 days when I begin another drug that may or may not interact with the first one, requiring another two weeks of vampire lab visits every three days.

The whole experience has taught me something though - if you have to go in for frequent lab work, go to a hospital. Himself confessed that hospital vampires phlebotomists generally have more experience overall (not to mention much more experience with difficult veins or people like me who now artificially bleed like a stuck pig upon the slightest abrasion) and are more skilled with a needle. I don't want to risk jeopardizing the streak yet, but so far, 5 sticks with needles (counting the one where I got stuck and didn't bleed - odd) and not a single, solitary bruise. A significant event, given the fact that this medication makes me bruise spontaneously.

It still doesn't make me terribly fond of vampires blood draws, but at least it makes it tolerable. Plus, they give Woodstock a dum dum sucker if she happens to be with me, which makes her find my lab visits downright thrilling. And anything that makes a toddler happy, makes a toddler's mother very happy.