What do snow at Christmas, $20 found in an old coat pocket, and blood draws have in common?

They are all potential surprises.

One of them is a little bit less “great” than the others.

I took AsthmaMan to the pediatrician for his asthma management appointment and they surprised use with a blood draw.

If you’ve never seen  a 3 year old get his blood drawn it’s basically like watching someone draw blood from a rabid bear.  

No really…

Our appointment started out badly.

AsthmaMan only “likes” to go to the doctor when he can’t breathe, he was doing just dandy today… that’s why we were going to a management appointment, he didn’t feel that chatting with the doctor was a good use of his time.

Except here’s the deal, you can’t have a “management” appointment when there is an emergency going on… so we’ve had to wait until things have calmed down enough to actually make this appointment.

He’d just finished gymnastics, his grandparents were in town, and we had to wait… by the time we finished talking to the doctor he was a mess… and then she announced he would be getting a flu shot and his blood drawn (SWEET!).

He was jumping off the exam table, yelling, telling the pediatrician she was a pretzel (it makes no sense) during the appointment, and then she made the announcement and he stopped. He looked directly at me and said “no”.

The flu shot went ok, he was annoyed that it was in his leg and he had to lie down, but he got over it rather quickly.

and then the tech came in and explained what we’d do for a blood draw…

He was not thrilled with her description, especially the part about being perfectly still and being held down.

She then had me wrap in the squeeze of death to keep him still.

I held his body with one arm, and wrapped my legs around his, while holding the blood draw arm as still as possible.

Have you ever held a three (almost four) year old down?

It’s not easy.

There was a lot of him slapping me in the face, attempting to bite, and kicking everything he could find.

I think my entire body is bruised.

He did fine once the needle was in, but then Princess kept trying to pull out the needle and climb into my lab because she was jealous.

I left asking myself how important that blood draw actually was… cause seriously… it was a bit much.

On a gross note, he loved watching the blood come out, and he kept shouting “It’s a snack for a vampire!”. All the people around us must have been wondering what in the heck he was talking about.