Bloody blood tests

I'm off in the morning to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Oh lucky, lucky me. My gorgeous girls have suspected Glandular Fever (we don't do Swine Flu in this house ... oh no ... sooooooo last year, so very, very ordinary) and blood tests are in order, to establish whether or not their on-going early morning sore throats/day-long swollen neck glands/persistent lethargy, are indeed a consequence of this particular 'lergy.

Me, I'm pretty sceptical. Needless to say, I've been telling them for weeks now that they should get a grip. Pull themselves together. Stop whingeing. Enough already with the sore throats. I mean, nobody ever died of a sore throat, did they? Like I've said before: I am a Very Bad Mum.

I tried explaining to my GP that the fact that Eldest Daughter, being fourteen and finally on holiday and ONLY interested in watching re-runs of 'Friends' and 'Family Guy' from the comfort of our very comfy sofa, did not mean necessarily mean that she had a nasty viral infection... but he remained adamant. Blood tests, for both girls, are in his opinion the only way forward.

Youngest Daughter has very obvious dark rings beneath her beautiful brown eyes. And she is underweight. And she has absolutely NO appetite. Eldest Daughter has no energy for anything, whatsoever (apart from picking up the remote). Apparently (says GP) glandular fever is very much in our midst and is wreaking silent havoc ... but, being non-fatal, is not getting the press mileage that Swine Flu currently commands.

What lovely GP doesn't know is that, when confronted with a needle, both my girls become utterly deranged. Eldest Daughter last had a blood test three years ago and immediately passed out. When she came round, she spoke fluent Spanish for fifteen minutes (a language she hadn't, to my knoweldge, yet encountered). Youngest Daughter had a blood test last February. She also passed out, immediately. After oxygen and the urgent summonsing of a senior consultant, they finally brought her round. She then proceeded to vomit, spectacularly, and said (in perfect English), 'I will kill the next person who touches me.'

I'm so looking forward to tomorrow.

And all this has got me thinking.

Ex-Husband has never seen either of our daughters vomit. Not ever. Not in almost fifteen years. Ex-Husband has never witnessed our delightful daughters' mutual fear of needles .... or watched them slip into unconsciousness as a consequence of that fear. Ex-Husband has never agonised over whether Yongest Daughter's bleeding finger (bitten almost in half - really! - by a neighbour's rampant hampster) warranted a 999 call. And he was in Istanbul when Eldest Daughter fell down the stairs and broke her arm in two places. Ex-Husband has no absolutey no idea.

There's a very BIG part of me that SO wishes that I could delegate tomorrow's responsibility to him. Surely it's about time? I so wish that I could say, 'Sorry, you'll have to do it. It's just that I'm in a meeting all day' or 'I'm on a conference call with KL and Houston and Jo'burg from 10am. I'd really love to, but it's completely impossible.'

But I know that if I did delegate, Ex-Husband would be entirely & uttery hopeless. And I know that I would be letting my gorgeous girls down. Ex-Husband, at the first sight of a needle, would himself become immediately unconscious, start vomitting, need oxygen and then require the ministrations of a (preferably sexy) senior (female) consultant. I know, of course, that it's far better for me - and my gorgeous girls - that I go along with them tomorrow, and not him.

And so I will go along, hold their hands, smile determinedly through gritted teeth, tell them that it doesn't hurt AT ALL and promise them that when it's all over we'll go straight to Top Shop. And everything will be just fine.