"the blood is the life!"

Blood.  The Elixir of Life.  Always moving, it carries oxygen through our veins, flows out in menses, brings color to our cheeks, makes sex enjoyable, keeps us warm, and is always red, never blue.  I will never, ever again take it for granted.

I understand now, the Vampire's need.  For I have sucked another's blood and have found it to be to my liking.

The Christians drink, symbolically anyway, the blood of Christ.  Catholics take it a little further. I have often wondered about this paradoxically shared love of blood among seeming opponents. Perhaps Vampires and Christians are really not that different after all. 

I have just spent three nights in a hospital bed.  I found myself there after I finally realized on the day after Christmas that the way I had been feeling for the past couple of days was definitely not normal, even for a chemotherapy patient.  Unable to stand in the shower for any length of time, with chills that wouldn't end, and an inability to accomplish even simple tasks, I finally checked my temp. (102.9 at its highest) and called the doctor.  

Which landed me in the hospital for three nights, due to having next to zero white blood cells, and a dangerously low red blood count.  There I lay, hooked up to IV antibiotics, watching Gremlins and Westside Story and other great classics on the AMC, playing Quiddler, and finishing a fantastic novel.

On the third day, they gave me two blood transfusions.  I immediately felt like a new person, with a new life. Only slightly more blood-thirsty.  

So if you see me on some dark night, staring at you rather hungrily, please take precautions.  

Consider yourself warned.

(Title quote from Bram Stoker's Dracula)