Needles

A lot talk about vaccines these days.  I sense some of the resistance is the fear of getting stuck with a needle.  This is funny given  almost everyone on earth now has a tattoo. That fear probably goes way back to when you were an infant and got stuck with all the vaccines against your will:  rubella, measles, mumps, etc.  I remember when I was 6 months old  my doctor, Tom Cummins, soothing my Mom before he vaccinated me,  “he’s only going to feel a little prick”.  Jesus, that hurt.  I wailed out-loud, “the only little prick in here is Dr. Cummins.” I didn’t give him permission to do that.  I should have sued him or started a boycott on Twitter.  Whether you agree with it or not; when you get sick you are going to get stuck with needles, catheters, scalpels – all kinds of sharp instruments to measure your health. 

When I first got cancer, diagnostic tests were a hell of a lot more painful.  Before PET scans oncologists ordered lymphangiograms to x-ray your lymph nodes.  Your lymph nodes are smaller than the hair on your head, so to fill them with radioactive dye the radiologist would cut open the top of both feet then insert a tiny catheter in each wound attached to a massive IV pump.  If the catheter got inserted into the lymph chain they then jammed a 2 inch big bore needle through the web of your toes to pump in more dye.  The procedure took about 8 hours lying flat on a radiology table.   Imaging has improved since then, thank God, and lymphangiograms have been banned by Amnesty International as a form of torture.  Bone marrow biopsies, however, are still around.  They used to be performed with an apple corer like tool screwed manually into your hip using only local anesthetic.  Ever wonder how Hollywood dreams up movies like “Saw?” Now you know.  The local anesthetic was only good for breaking the skin since it couldn’t numb the bone where the corer was entering.  My biopsy hurt so much I bent the railing back on the stretcher.  Now they just knock you out in the OR rather than put you through the agony.

I don’t know if either of those things hurt more than stuff that goes on outside of healthcare.  When I was 12 one summer my cousin John and I innovated an old game called Stretch.  Stretch involves two people standing about 5 feet apart then throwing knives at each other’s feet.  If you could stretch your foot to the knife thrown at you; you then could throw the knife back to make them stretch. (We didn’t have cable TVback then).  Rather than use knives this day we used steel darts from the dart board.  John wasn’t a great dart thrower so his last toss went right through my ankle.  That smarted.  That didn’t hurt as much though, as the salt water catfish barb that went through the top of my foot when I was fishing on the beach.  Lucky for me I’m on blood thinners, so I bled out a river along with all the venom.   Some sharp things, however,  are deceiving since they look soft on the surface.  One Christmas Diane and were having coffee early in the morning before I went to work.  All of sudden there was this massive crash in the living room when the Christmas tree tipped over.  Between all the light bulbs and ornaments broken several of the smaller tree branches got snapped off.  Rather than  just trim off the broken branches with pruning shears I decided to yank them off by hand.  It’s amazing how sharp a little pine branch is especially when you shove it right through the web of your palm.  When I pulled it out the artery sprayed blood all over the Christmas presents. My Brit friends would have yelled, “Bloody ‘ell”.

Being diagnosed and treated for most illnesses involves getting painfully stuck with needles and sharp objects, either putting drugs in or taking fluids out.  Sorry, this is not the meta verse where you can imagine it happening to your avatar; you can’t get around it.  Yes, it hurts for a moment or two, but it’s for your own good.  I understand there is a wide spectrum of reasons people choose not to get vaccinated; but if its your fear of needles, get over it you big baby.  Slainte.