Recently I visited the dentist and marveled about the comfort of today’s hypodermic needles. I was having a couple of cavities filled on the outer edges of my top front teeth. I figured the relevant gummy tissue that would endure impaling had to be located beneath my top lip — where I imagined a Milky Way constellation of nerve endings setting off a pyrotechnic burst of agony. I was not looking forward.
My dentist had placed a couple of cotton swabs doused in numbing agent beneath my top lip before slipping the needle into the soft flesh; I hardly felt a poke. “You are an artist,” I told my dentist.
Reflecting back about my life-long fear of needles, I am reminded of the dread I felt about visiting my doctor’s office as a child, not knowing if I was going to be harpooned. (I think the hyperbole’s justified given the far greater girth needles had in the late 1970s, early 1980s.) If I wasn’t literally sick, I would feel ill my anxiety churned up at the prospect of enduring a hypodermic impaling.
Believe it or not I have largely overcome my fear of needles ever since the months that followed nine-eleven, when the nation was caught up in the throes of giving back to community: I donated blood no less than six times.
At that point I had not yet triumphed over my abject fear needles, but I decided then it was just something I had to tolerate for a greater good.
After my first-time visit to the blood bank, it became far more of a certainty when I took into consideration the blood bank’s advice, encouraging donors to arrive at the clinic with a full stomach. Since I would be losing a bit of iron with my donation, it stood as reason enough for me to treat myself to a shawarma loaded pita from a nearby middle eastern restaurant.
I always requested a babaganoush spread as well as a small, but potent dollop of schug — a jalapeno-based condiment so spicy it would draw sweat from my scalp.
Yes, it violated every behavioral or Pavlovian precept of delaying reward for a task accomplished, but the shawarma sandwich really put my mind at ease about accepting the poke — so that others might live.
While the shawarma pita greased my motivation to donate blood, there was, before long, another force at work to quell my initiative.
That opposition was a bumbling, sadistic nurse who may as well have been a graduate of the Nurse Ratchet School of Medicine. Try as she might, should could not find the vessel in my right arm.
It was possibly the longest ninety seconds in my life as she probed the layers of flesh beneath my dermis. Now, I have to give credit where credit is merited — she did ask for permission: to move the needle while it was lodged in my arm.
Of course I objected to the lunatic request. I nearly raised my voice, consumed with fear as I sat in the donor ‘s reclining chair.
“You know what? Perhaps there’s someone else who can assist me,” I mustered with as much tact and grace I could fathom.
Before long, other members of the blood bank staff stood at my side, trying to soothe my throttled nerves, assuring me that I didn’t have to go through with the donation. The offending nurse was quickly and quietly squired away.
As I regained my composure, I didn’t want to lose this opportunity to give back to the community— not on account of some harpoon-happy nurse. “No — I’m still going through with it,” I informed them. “Just take the blood from my left arm.”
I’ll admit I was still on edge as another nurse prepared the other arm for blood withdrawal, however, hoped she would exert extra caution so as not to further spook me.
I went on to continue donating blood in San Francisco until I relocated back to Southern California. No unfortunate needle mishaps to report since the occasion at the San Francisco blood bank. To me, it seems the needles get smaller and smaller while my physical comfort increases. However, I still endure the psychic unease of penetration whenever visiting the doctor’s or the dentist’s office. I’ve grown older and wise enough to mask the child who became physically sick whenever visiting his doctor.
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Previously Published on Medium
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Needle fear develops between age 4-5, when children can remember but can’t abstract to understand WHY they’re getting hurt. In 1982, we began giving booster immunizations at age 4-6, typically all at once “to get it over with”. You can’t logic yourself out of a feeling you didn’t come to by logic. We found in 2012 that 64% of adolescents still had high fear of needles from that event. 3 years later, those with the most fear were 2.5x more likely not to have gotten their HPV vaccines. And during Covid, we predicted 26% of people wouldn’t get vaccinated –… Read more »