Bone Marrow

I asked Dave to write a blog post about his bone marrow biopsy. This is his experience from yesterday.

It is never a good experience to lay face down on a table or bed and have another man stand above you and remove your pants preparing to insert a foreign object into any portion of that part of your body. Sure there are some situations where this might be a bit more acceptable than others, but it is never what you would call a good experience. It is something that had never happened to me until this year and now I have endured it twice.

"The first thing I am going to do is numb the skin", he says. "After that you shouldn't feel anything but pressure." Words so comforting that I grab the sides of the table with both hands, arch my back and start instinctively taking deep breaths.

"This is going to burn just a little." I jump forward on contact.

"All I'm doing is using my finger right now," he says as he touches me again and I lunge a bit less than the time before. "Now, it's not going to be good for any of us if you come up off of this table."

"I'm not going anywhere," I say as I grasp the edges of the table until my fingers feel cramped.

Then the burn. Not a bad burn, just a burn. Then the fingers again. Apply pressure and massaging.

"You feel anything?" he says after about a minute. "No."

"Good because I just stuck a needle in you."

While I have not seen the full length of this needle, I know that it must be sizeable as it is designed to go through what must be several inches of flesh and land in my hip socket.

"All right, this will burn a little because I'm putting the medicine in." And a small burn comes, but I have relaxed after the initial numbing.

"Now for the big one. You should just feel pressure here." I feel something jab into my hip bone. No pain, just pressure and sensation. A small grind type of feeling. And then it's all done. The needle is out before I know it and I release the table, relax my arms and lay there sweating, despite the fact that the room temperature is 65 degrees.

That's a "bone marrow" as they call it. I think the sample will be biopsied now and bone marrow biopsy is probably the proper name for the procedure. I hope you never have to endure the experience and I certainly hope you don't have to do it twice in a year.

We are still waiting for the results.