I used to be tough

When I was in elementary school at Hudson Elementary, I prided myself in being faster and stronger than the boys. I held records for climbing the rope in gym.
So, when I was a teenager and cut myself in the sink while doing the dishes when a glass broke and I almost fainted, I was so surprised that I wasn't tougher. Then I got sick and they pricked my finger at the doctor's office and I think I did faint. It really was blow to my ego that I was afraid of blood and couldn't control my physical reaction to it.
I remember one time waiting in line to give blood at a blood drive on campus in college reading all of the warnings about AIDS and then it was my turn to go lay on the hospital bed thing. As I approached it, I almost didn't make it and the nurse won't take my blood even as I tried to be brave, I was really light headed and lost my balance. I felt guilty eating the cookie and drinking the juice on her insistence.
So, when Ariel was first admitted to the hospital in 2005 I kept telling the nurses that I was not good around blood. When I found out the day before she was released that I would be in charge of administering her IV antibiotics 3 times a day and changing the dressing at her central line site twice a week, I had a melt down. I really felt that it was too much for me. I never wanted to go into the medical industry for a reason, and now, I just had to do it, it was just up to me, end of story. I was so scared to leave the hospital. My impression when I first found out she had cancer was that she would be in the hospital for months, so when they wanted to send us home after just 5 days, I wasn't ready. But back to the blood. . . I remembered the priesthood blessings that I had been given and the strength that I had been promised and I really did feel buoyed up and was able to do things that I had never thought I could.
Then about a year and a half into treatment, I almost fainted again. We were in the emergency room in the middle of the night with an unexplainable fever, and the nurse was trying to access her port (poking her chest with a needle) to draw blood and start and IV. Ariel was scared, so I was holding her hands and putting on a brave face. The nurse wasn't sure of what she was doing, so I feigned confidence in her too, hoping that she could do it and it would all work out. After 3 attempts, she called in an IV team. By this point I was running out of promises for Ariel and confidence in the medical staff. When the IV team arrived, I was relieved. The lady looked a lot more confident and put together, she must know what she was doing, right? After Ariel was stabbed two more times without success, my knees started to get wobbly, so I propped myself up. Then she was stabbed again and the nurse tried to push the needle in farther to get the port to work. Ariel had also put a brave face by this point, but was fighting back tears. Then the room started spinning and I couldn't think straight and my palms were sweaty, but I felt so guilty for being so wimpy when Ariel and the nurses needed me to be strong. I sat down for a minute. When the nurse tried again, I could see the pain on Ariel's face and insisted that she stop pushing because Ariel was in pain. Then I asked them to send down a nurse from the HEM/ONC floor. When she arrived is was such a relief to see a familiar face and she accessed Ariel's port right away with no problems. We had at least two more similar instances in the months that followed, but then I knew to ask for the HEM/ONC nurse right away. That incidence of almost fainting in the emergency room reminded me of the time that I really did faint on my mission, so I told Ariel and all the nurses about it to lighten up the room.
My companion had twisted her ankle, but was afraid that she would get sent home if anyone found out about it. She couldn't really put any weight on it and the elders made an appointment for her to see a doctor and they accompanied us there. As the doctor was examining her ankle he was pushing on different spots and asking her if it hurt. He wasn't looking at her face and she wasn't saying anything, but I could see from her face that she was in a lot of pain. I was taking it all in and the next thing I knew I was laying on the floor with my head sticking out in the hallway watching the Ukrainian nurses walk by in their short white old-fashioned nurse dresses and listening to the elders, the doctor and my companion talking about how I just fainted and wishing that everyone would be a little quieter so I could just drift off to sleep with the comfortable cold tile floor against my cheek.