Because I Promised: Needles And Why I Hate Them

A bad stick

There are good sticks and there are bad sticks.

A good stick is usually someone like a phlebotomist or a pediatric nurse. They insert needles into people's bodies on a very regular basis, often in areas that are normally a little tricky. The needles go in so fast and smoothly that you barely feel them. You don't feel the needle moving around under your skin, poking into places where it shouldn't go. They don't mumble to themselves about your bad veins making life difficult for them. It just gets done.

A bad stick is usually someone who doesn't insert needles unless they have to or are new to the process. Like doctors*or new EMTs. They've practiced on a lot of oranges and oranges are not the same as my human flesh. I would like to blame these people for all of the shrieking I am wont to do when the suggestion of an I.V. arises. They are the reason that I can recite my patient's bill of rights to hospital staff by rote. The reason that when crossed with the prospect of dying or being hospitalized, there is always a moment where I consider death as a more palatable option.

The thought of a foreign object puncturing my skin is distasteful but it isn't that part that really bothers me. After all, I have tattoos. Those weren't comfortable but they are more like cuts with ink poured into the marks. It is the deep invasion of metal into my body. The foreign pointed object that so often hits the wrong nerve endings. The thing that I can see immersed in, well, me that does not belong. It makes me want to scream even typing about it.

For several years I was a human pin cushion. Due to a chronic illness, someone was always jabbing me for blood tests, I.V.s and the occasional heplock when hospitalized.You would think I would have gotten used to it but nope. I didn't even resign myself to it being fact of life, like so many others in the situation. There wasn't a single time when I didn't secretly plot an escape. It hurt. I clenched. I cried.

I was recently presented with the possibility of another illness. The illness should scare me but it doesn't really because I have  the needles to think about. I've had a long time to distance myself from the needles grateful that I don't have to deal with them. And now the potential for blood tests and injections and heplocks and I.V.'s if my prognosis is bad scares me far more than disease.

It is irrational. I know. But they are needles, you know?

* This does not include my niece the doctor whom I am sure is excellent at stabbing people.