Pricked

So we reached KK Hospital in good time. It was a very small room, really. A nice, cozy office with a side room where nice, sharp needles are inserted into your veins. You know how to tell when you are really starting to get old or "of age"? When the nurse says that you can sign your own form while your 17 year old brother has to have his signed by your father.

The nurse ushered all 5 of us into the room, then explained the blood disorder to us. Apparently, I think only 4% of Singapore's population or something has it. We're very lucky indeed. It's kind of odd listening to the nurse explain stuff that you kind of learn in school and then seeing the exact picture of the 23 pairs of chromosomes that you have studied in your textbook, in the office. There are a lot of kinds of thalassaemia and she explained it to us, but I kind of got confused after a while because she was telling us what would happen if an alpha married a beta or a beta with beta or alpha with alpha or alpha with something-else or beta with something-else. You get the point. I hope neither my brother nor I have it.

I was shaking so hard my mother was asking if I was feeling cold. Mum was the first one to draw blood. She's got really weird veins in her arm that kinds of slips everywhere, making it really difficult to draw blood. The nurse was comparing the vein in both my arms and telling me that the one on the right is more obvious, so easier to draw. Damn, I feel cheated. All these years of drawing blood, they always drew from my left arm.

There were a few more places we went to and on the way we passed by AJC. Seriously, I miss that place and the time spent there. I think they renovated the sign at the back gate but other than that, it looks pretty much the same from outside.

Sometimes I think I like hospitals. Sometimes I think I don't.