Waiting for blood

The blood-draw waiting area at Mayo is always packed, because practically everyone needs to have his/her blood drawn first thing in the morning. The waiting area is a big, long room filled with wall-to-wall chairs. I'd guess there's seating for about 100 people -- all patients, because nobody else is allowed in the waiting area. When you enter the room, you stand around for a couple seconds looking a little shocked at the crowd. Even if you've been in there a million times before, it's always a little surprising. Then you try to pinpoint one open chair in the sea of chairs and climb over everybody to get to your seat. Then you sit and wait as lab techs pop out from behind curtains every few seconds, calling out names. The crowd watches a little jealously as the other people get their names called to go behind the curtains and get stuck.

Then when your name gets called, you feel very special. "Heh, heh, heh," you think, again trying to stuff your book into your purse while climbing gracefully out of the middle of a row of people. "I'm the chosen one." You know everyone is jealous.

Today, a lab tech came out from behind a curtain and called a name, and two guys popped up. It turned out there were two little old men with the exact same name, and it wasn't, like, "Bob Smith", either. It took a minute to get everything sorted out. This happened right in front of me, and everyone in my section of the waiting area got a good chuckle out of it, because, well, there's nothing else to do except sit around and feel jealous. I felt a little bad for the guy who didn't make the cut, though. I can imagine how excited he was to have his name called in the first place.

Despite all of the witnesses, I'm probably the only one blogging this, because I'm usually the youngest person in the blood-draw area by about 30 years.

I see Dr. H in a little bit. I'll post an update when I get one.