Lessons from getting my blood drawn

This morning I had some blood drawn.  I got a new doctor recently and it was cheaper to get a physical than to do a new patient appointment.  Of course, you're supposed to get a physical annually anyway.  So I went to my doctor and he ordered lab work, just to see what my cholesterol is.

I hate getting my blood drawn.  The first time I went to South Africa, I had heard it was a good idea to get a Hepatitis test and an HIV test when I got back.  So I did it.  They ended up poking one of my arms 5 or 6 times, finally getting a little bit of blood, and then it stopped.  So they had to do the other arm.  They didn't get enough blood there either.  By the end of things I was really light headed and had to sit in my car for 15 or 20 minutes just to gather up the strength to drive home.

I don't know if I'm a wuss and I can't emotionally handle all the poking and thought of my blood being drawn or if I have some physical thing where even just a few tubes of blood lost affects my energy level so drastically.

Oh yeah, the test came back and showed that I might have both HIV and Hepatitis C, so I had to re-do it.  I ended up testing negative for both, and the blood test wasn't as difficult the second time.

Anyway, today I went in and had an experience that again was awful.  The Phlebotomist had to poke my arm a couple times to get it, and as the blood was coming out, I could feel the energy draining from my face and stomach.  By the time it was finished, I could barely hear anything or see anything and was totally sure I was going to pass out.  Thankfully Julie was with me.

Again, I really don't know if this is an emotional/stress thing or a physical thing.  I'm not writing just to share about me freaking out, though.  I'm writing to share a realization I had.  When I have my blood drawn and lose all energy and much of my sensory capability, it feels kind of like being on drugs (comparing it to what I have heard illegal drugs are like, and to my own experiences after surgery or on antihistamines).

Whether the cause is being under the influence of a substance or loss of blood, the impaired person is the one who is not as "real" as the rest of the world.  However, it's the rest of the world that feels surreal to the impaired person.

I thought this was a great example of what C.S. Lewis talks about in The Great Divorce.  In Lewis' allegorical heaven, people view themselves as ghosts, while heaven is more real than they are.  We often think of heaven and spiritual things as nebulous mysteries, while we think of the Earth we walk on as "real."  Lewis' idea was that we are the less real, less solid things, and that the spiritual realm is the real thing.  The spiritual doesn't pass through us, we pass through it.

In my experience today, I was less "alive" (as my life-force was drained quite literally) than the world around me, but I still felt "real," and thought everything else was surreal.  The truth, quite differently, was that I was less myself, less "real" than normal, and everything else was just as real as normal.

The other lesson I thought of related to something my friend said a few years ago.  Every culture has a story about some being/creature that sucks blood or life from humans.  Whether it's a vampire or a chupacabra or some sort of demon.

This is the great fear of all humans--death--in terms of Genesis 2.  God breathed into humans in Genesis 2, and gave us what we usually call "souls."  In Hebrew, the word used there (nefesh) means "soul, life, living being, or throat."  The reason "throat" is related to "soul" and "life" is that they realized you could take a life easily by attacking the throat.  The biblical view of the soul is intertwined with being alive in a very physical sense.  I see a strong connection between our physical blood and the very idea of being alive (not just on a medical level, but on a philosophical and spiritual one).

So as I felt the energy draining from parts of my body that weren't being stuck with needles, I was reminded of the fact that our spiritual energy (that nebulous, but more real than we realize thing) is somehow intertwined with this red liquid that was being removed from my body.  When you realize that it forever changes the way you think about those vampire/chupacabra stories.  What if these aren't mere stories about fictional beings, but a picture of the very real desire the Enemy has to affect our spiritual well-being by dampening our life's energy through sapping our physical health?

Take care of yourself--body, mind, soul, and spirit.