Bunny visits the vampire

Dirtbunny has a medical condition that means she has to get routine blood work done several times a year. This means a trip to the vampire. These trips cause Bunny a lot of angst:

• Bunny does not particularly care for needles and has a hard time believing that they really need to completely fill all those vials.
• Bunny has been poked by the vampire enough times that her veins are getting hard to find. This results in more poking and more pain.
• Bunny is supposed to fast for 12 hours before she goes. Two points result from this:

1. She has to go early in the morning before coffee. This is bad for Bunny, bad for the vampire, and bad for the American people.
2. Nothing makes Bunny want to eat more than not being allowed to for 12 hours.

Also, because of Bunny's medical condition, she is on the "Special Needs" list for flu shots aaaaand it's flu shot time, so this morning, Bunny killed two birds with one stone and got vampired and flu shotted. The vampire thing went fine. The Special Needs flu shot stuff is another matter.

First of all, there's the name. Special Needs. To me, that conjures up images of children who wear bike helmets all the time. "Special Needs" is a gentler label than the ones you will hear around the 1970s school yard I grew up in, but we all know exactly what it means, and I don't really want to be one.

Two, perhaps you don't know who is Special Needs for flu shots. According to my HMO's website, these people include health care workers who directly care for patients, pregnant women, babies and people who are frequently around babies, people with chronic health conditions (like moi), and OLD PEOPLE.

At my HMO, the largest group of Special Needs flu shot people is composed of the aged. Old People freak me out. They tend to be friendly and want to talk to me, especially when I'm knitting, which I usually am because I knit in waiting rooms. I hate talking to strangers because I'm misanthropic and shy. I am also hearing impaired. I have a really hard time hearing and understanding many old people and their soft, quavery voices. So I feel at an enormous disadvantage when they try to engage me in conversation. But, really, who wants to be rude to old people? Even Dirtbunny is not that much of an asshole. Plus, many of them are there with caregivers, or they have oxygen, or are in wheelchairs, or walk with canes. Bunny worries a lot about becoming infirm (but not enough to take charge of her health) and doesn't like to be reminded about this.

Then there is the other kind of Old Person. This is the booming, physically still vital, but mentally starting to decline sort of person. Last year there was one who spoke at the top of his voice for fifteen minutes about being 80 something years old and storming the beach at Normandy and blah blah blah. All Bunny could think was "Shut it, old timer." So Bunny is misanthropic and an asshole and the line was really long that day, but if he had been there today, Bunny would probably have reacted differently.

Sometimes Bunny cannot get it together well enough to get through a routine day comfortably. Getting up, commuting, working, daily chores, all of it seems too much. And my life is easy compared to most. I cannot even imagine being half my current age (i.e., being stupider and possessing fewer coping skills) and facing a combat situation. How do ordinary people get through a day of war? How could they stand it? This loud old coot did something unimaginably difficult and helped to save us from fascism. I'll never understand it, but I am finally finding some compassion for it. If he'd been in line today, I would probably have fought through the caffeine-deprived crankiness and cut him a break.