Get that Needle Away from Me!
Written by Yavonda Chase of LittleRockMamas

 
I’ve never been a fan of needles.

In fact, they really freaked me out.

Oh, I could stand to get blood drawn at the doctor’s office — if I didn’t watch. I got all of my essential vaccinations as a child and the boosters as an adult. But you’d better believe I avoided the ones I considered optional — like the flu shot. I’ve actually said, “I’d rather get the flu than the flu shot.”

Still not convinced of my phobia?

I must admit that I have been known to rejoice in the fact that my semester in London raised my risk of developing mad-cow disease and therefore means I can’t give blood. No guilt for me — the Red Cross doesn’t WANT my blood!

I think my last example officially pushed my needle aversion into unhealthy territory.

So if you had told me two years ago that I would be giving myself a shot every day, I would have told you that you were nuts. But that is exactly what I do.

In July 2011, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. At the time, there was one treatment in a pill form, but it was brand new and my neurologist wasn’t yet sold on it. So my options were shots, shots or shots. There was the daily shot option, which had the least number of physical side-effects but required a daily shot! Then there were ones that were every other day and had flu-like side effects. The final option was one shot a week, but it had to be given intramuscularly and had wicked flu-like side effects.

I admit I freaked out over my options. We won’t even discuss how much I freaked out over the diagnosis — that is a whole different blog post. Ultimately, I gritted my teeth, put on my big girl panties and chose the daily shot option in the hopes that my daughter wouldn’t see her mommy being sick all of time.

Guess what? It hasn’t been that bad. I’ll admit that there are days I can’t stand the thought of giving myself a shot and I don’t. (Don’t tell my neurologist!) But those days are pretty rare.

Most days, I really don’t think about the shot. At first I always used an auto injector, which hid the needle from sight. But now, I have found that there are certain areas that are easier to inject manually. So I do. It is just life.

I didn’t bat an eye when I got my flu shot last week. And I recently bid on and won a couple of trips to an acupuncturist. The woman taking my money told me I was brave to try acupuncture. My reply, “After jabbing myself daily, I don’t figure this will be that different.”

So I guess I’ve conquered my phobia. I guess that is one good thing MS has done for me — but out of sheer stubbornness, I refuse to give it the credit.

Yavonda Chase blogs as Lucky Mama on Little Rock Mamas. She and her husband have one beautiful daughter, two dogs and one cat in a house that will never be organized! Yavonda loves to spend much of her time reading, which makes her career as a newspaper editor a pretty good fit.