saline flush...

i feel like such an idiot. i'm a bucket of nerves right now. i just tried to get things all set up for my medrol infusion, and as i was doing the saline flush before i hooked up the medicine, i freaked out because of a small air bubble in the syringe and pulled back the plunger and filled the tubing with my blood. (!!!) so i called the nursing service and the woman i spoke to said she would page the nurse on call, but i sat and waited and waited and cried a little and freaked out and waited, and knew my blood was clotting, and thirty minutes went by and i didn't get a call back. so i called the nursing service again, and was told that they were trying to get a hold of the nurse on call, and they would try another nurse.

so a few minutes passed and the phone rang and it was jill, the nurse who set things up yesterday. and she walked me through some steps and as it turned out, the IV line is clogged and now she's on her way here. i feel like the biggest moron ever because she wasn't the nurse on call, and now she has to come fix my blunder on her day off and she was audibly unexcited about this and god why do i have to be such a paranoid baby about tiny air bubbles?!

i can't even articulate how hypersensitive (or how much of a hypochondriac?) i am right now with this thing in my arm. i feel EVERYTHING, even things that don't exist. it's like this port into my vascular system has rendered me defenseless to all things bad, and the plastic safeguards built into the tubes couldn't possibly be working properly and i'm sure to suffer death by embolism any moment now.

ugh, it's like i can feel the air bubbles moving around. it makes me feel sick and dizzy and really really frightened. i'm looking at it now--this mess of tape and tubes and clamps, all stuck to my arm. who am i? what has happened to me? when will this stop?