You’d think that I’d be used to needles by now. Six years of giving blood, having bone marrow and the surrounding liquid taken out, and a pneumothorax (collapsed lung – in high school) is a lot of time to get used to something. However, I still can’t look at needles.

I went to get my blood drawn today. This will be the two month mark of my clinical trial (for a drug called Ponatinib – It doesn’t have a market name yet). I posted the results of my previous four tests in a blog I wrote last week, so it will be interesting to see if I’m still “shrinking” (kidding, of course). If my health is anyway related to the way I feel, then I must be doing well because I feel incredible. I’m running over three miles a day for at least five days a week, eating really healthy, and I have a ton more energy. In fact, I’ve lost eight pounds in a month. I desperately want this medicine to work for me. According to the statistics, there’s about a 60% chance it will.

In the lab today, I posed the question (to myself): which is more awkward, an elevator ride or a waiting room? Clearly it’s an elevator ride, but what if you’re in a doctor’s office waiting room. There’s more time for speculation. There’s never any cell phone reception so you have nothing else to do but look around and wonder why everyone else is there, as if there’s some sort of hidden treasure in one of the rooms in the back. How dare someone else come to the doctor and get my treasure.

Back to the cell phone reception for a second. Today, I realized I have way too many apps on my phone that require the use of either a 3G network or a WiFi connection. That’s a problem when you’re scrambling through your phone, trying to find something to do so that you don’t end up grabbing the latest Parenthood magazine. Not that there’s anything wrong with Parenthood magazine. I’m just more like the Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop type.

Sitting across from me at the Quest laboratory was a man with a cooler. What is the first thing you think about when you associate a cooler and the medical field? For me, it’s a heart. So I was wondering if he was carrying a heart in this cooler:

It would have been more intriguing if we were in an emergency room, but my imagination can run wild at times. Like the briefcase in Pulp Fiction, I guess we’ll never know.

As for my blood test, I’ll receive the latest results in a few days. All that matters, however, is today. And today, I feel wonderful.