My little prose-maybe-future-essay response:

Maybe you don’t need tenteki anymore.

Tenteki. A word so engraved in my memory that I’ve carried it with me since that month in Japan 30 years ago, the month I spent in the hospital wondering what was wrong with my blood. My doctors, also wondering what was wrong with my blood, took CBCs every day. Convinced I wasn’t eating enough and I was getting too thin, they made sure I received glucose daily through an IV. IV, in Japanese, is tenteki.

Then the day came when the on-duty nurse couldn’t find a vein. She stuck me, moved the needle around while I tried not to squirm, gave up and stuck me again, I squirmed, she gave up. Another nurse came in to try with the same results. Then the head nurse arrived, always calm and confident, kind to me. She, too, couldn’t get the needle into the vein. My arm throbbed. I was close to tears.

In came the doctor. “Maybe you don’t need tenteki anymore,” he said. Perhaps this was the best way of saving face, of absolving the nurses of the failure of my veins to be plumper, stronger, easier to pulpate and locate. Maybe he thought my weight was fine after all and not worth the constant needle-sticking.

I was relieved. To be sick and alone is better than to be sick and alone and having needles stuck in you.