Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Blue Turns To Grey

I’m not dying.
I didn’t think I was,
but it feels good to have it confirmed.
For the last four weeks I have had a very large bruise
over most of my left calf.
The weird part is I don’t remember hitting
my leg.
It just appeared,
and got very dark
and black.
I didn’t think much of it,
but then everyone who saw it started saying things like,
“Oh wow. That looks bad.”
Or “You should get that checked.”
My massage therapist said it.
My ballet teachers said it,
And then a friend of mine I had dinner with said it.
So this morning,
after trying to finish my taxes but still getting nowhere,
I took myself to the Doc in the Box.
The Dr. came in, looked at my leg for thirty seconds
and then told me I had to go get a venous scan.
STAT.
Thoughts of blood clot and imminent death
raced through my mind.
Even he said it was too dangerous to play around with.
And “No”, he said, “I couldn’t go to yoga.”
An hour and a half later I had blue gel on my entire leg
a green gown on,
and a nice tech named Jill running an ultrasound device up and down my body.
I listened to the sound of my blood pumping through my leg.
Whoosh.
Sometimes she would squeeze my calf
and then we would watch the increased flow of blood
peak and fall.
I kept waiting for her to pass over a spot on my leg
where the pumping would stop
and there would be nothing but silence
and her face would turn grey.
But that never happened.
She said I was fine.
There was no clot.
Only a mysterious bruise,
no one could explain.