At the doctor’s office again. Waiting to get stabbed for blood. Again. Living with chronic illnesses can seem like one unending trip of visits to the doctor, phlebotomist and various specialists. I’ve learned to sit in the waiting room with resigned patience. The ladies who work at the counter all know my face and name (as do all of the people at the pharmacy) – reciting my birthday always feels a bit silly after they greet me when I walk up.

As a child I was terrified of needles. Mom used to tell this story about when she worked the bank counter in Valdez – that would have put me in either 3rd or 4th grade. The school nurse came in to the bank and started describing this little girl with golden, curly hair who had been her worst patient for TB tests that day at the local elementary. As the nurse described the screaming and carrying on, how long it lasted, what the girl was wearing, her glasses, and so on… Mom finally became convinced that it was me. And yup, sure enough.

My youngest was terrified of needles as well. When she had to go in for nasal surgery during high school she quite literally climbed up the back wall off of the gurney. Every single person at the surgical clinic had been told no needles until after she is sedated but a nurse showed up with an IV needle in spite of that. Thankfully the anesthesiologist had a way for her to do intranasal sedation instead and we were able to talk her down.

Phobias oddly do seem to run in families. It’s hard to tell if it’s social conditioning or something genetic. That’s a tough one to test without doing all sorts of extremely horrific and unethical things to people.

I did try to make trips for vaccinations and the like as straightforward as possible for both my girls though. It’s still hard to tell in our case if it was me cueing her fear in some small subliminal way. I hope not. Not that passing along weird genetically based phobias is a great gift but I can at least try to manage my behavior. Not much I can do about my genes.

I’m not as needle phobic as I once was however. I used to be able to handle a gash from a fall with equanimity. I was a tomboy. Cuts and scrapes didn’t really bother me. Put pressure on the wound and elevate it, eventually it would stop bleeding.  But if someone looked at it and even suggested it needed stitches I’d go straight into hysteria. Because stitches involved needles. Not just for the sewing either. There were always local injections of anesthesia as well. I wasn’t a fan.

Mom said one trip when I was two took six grown men to hold me down. I swear she sounded proud of it. It sounded pretty traumatic to me. I always wondered why they didn’t just knock me out.

In 5th grade my brother and I managed to slice open my index finger with a serrated bread knife while doing dishes. I was in the bathroom with the wound packed and held above my head when my mom got home from work. The bleeding had stopped so I was optimistically thinking it was time to start wrapping it when Mom stomped in, whipped my hand down, and blood spurted out. “You’re getting stitches. Get in the car.”

I begged and sobbed and begged some more all the way to the hospital. But my brother got to write down all my assignments for me as I told him the answers til the splint came off so at least Mom was still practicing logical consequences. And I didn’t have to do dishes. She had a talent! Plus it got me out of P.E. which I loathed.

By the middle of high school I was marginally less hysterical when I needed stitches or shots. I had a few more episodes of each under my belt. Including a remarkable shiner/ eyebrow set of stitches sustained freshmen year after school playing football on the base with the other Coastie brats. I wasn’t opposed to exercise, just P.E. class.

Experience can be a good teacher. It certainly helps with desensitization from things we fear in childhood! I can sit still now and go to my happy little zen place when the average needle comes out. Have been able to pretty much since the college lost my shot records. Twice. And I had to go back into the clinic and redo the required vaccinations.

But it took me years to learn to cope with getting blood drawn. I’ve learned, over my lifetime, how to meditate and relax. Breath meditation works particularly well for me. For injections and stitches, the nurses and doctors want you to be relaxed. It hurts less, they can work faster. I concentrate on my breathing and ignore what they’re doing. This causes my muscles to relax. Things do hurt less. I feel like I’ve sort of stepped aside. It’s nice. Relaxing.

I can’t do that with blood draws though. I have to tighten my fist to get a vein to show up. Sometimes I have to open and close my fist, or hold a glove filled with hot water inside my elbow. The phlebotomist ties a tight rubber band around my upper arm while all this is happening. It doesn’t hurt but it distracts as much as the rest. So I find things to stare at or count numbers in my head or I chat with the “bloodsucker”. By now I know most of them pretty well.

Two or three years ago I finally convinced myself that if I could watch a cut bleed and bandage it with no problem I could watch the blood fill the vials. Now I know why the needle tugs and pulls and sometimes hurts more while they’re switching stuff around. It’s kind of interesting to watch each small tube fill up. The time passes faster too because I’m no longer worrying, anxious and afraid.

Sitting around waiting to do lab tests yet again is certainly not how I envisioned my life three decades ago. I figured when I left for college everything would be amazing and great and… in many ways it was. It didn’t occur to me back then that I’d keep getting sicker and I’d have to do the labs more often. Or that I’d end up disabled in medical retirement from a career I loved.

Yet I have to count my blessings. I get many good hours every day that are put to various purposes. And, if I’m careful and don’t overdo it, I can still get out and about seeing others and doing some of the things I enjoy.

Today, after I finished at the doctor’s office, I ran some errands. One store had some stunning lilies on sale – my youngest daughter’s favorite. Since I’d been ruminating about her earlier, on a whim, I brought them home. I cleaned all the weeds out of an old wooden tub and planted them in the sunshine. Now I have a lovely spot of beauty just off my back deck that came about because I was thinking about needle phobias and it reminded me of my youngest. That’s a pretty good day.