I Guess the Good News is that I'll Never Be a Heroin Addict

There aren’t a lot of things that scare me. I like to think of myself as a girl who can take care of herself and those around her. I pride myself in being able to handle most situations with a cool head. So when I woke up on Tuesday morning, I reminded myself of all of that but the dread still seeped in. By the time I walked in to the office I was already feeling sick to my stomach.

I handed over my insurance card and sat down in the waiting room. After thumbing through a four-year-old People magazine, I began to fidget nervously. I was twirling my hair around my finger when the nurse called my name.

Gulp.

As I walked into the room I could feel myself getting dizzy. The doctor walked in, said hello and asked me to sit on the chair.

“I need to be horizontal for this.”

He smiled and nodded towards the examination table. I could tell that my knees were weak as I stood up and I prayed that I didn’t pass out. The nurse walked in with tray full of torture devices and I began to sweat. She looked at me kind of funny and the doctor explained my situation.

Whew, he gets it. What a refreshing change!

I am absolutely terrified of needles. The kind of terror that when the nurse walks in with the vials and needles, I get nauseous. The last time I had blood drawn, the nurse didn’t take me seriously when I warned her of my fear…

“You’ll be fine. You don’t need to lie down. I’ve been doing this for a long time and everything with be ok,” said Nurse Ratchet as she tied the tourniquet around my arm.

I vaguely remember trying to tell her that my veins are impossible to find. She scoffed at my warning and told me to squeeze the stress ball as she started rooting around for a vein.

Squeeze this, you bitch. That was the last thing I remember thinking.

When I came to, I heard a kid screaming. I opened my eyes and saw a bunch of people in white standing over me. For a second I thought I’d died. I looked down and saw blood all over my arm and shirt. Nurse Ratchet had blood on her scrubs and the rest of the nursing staff was escorting people out of the lab. The screaming kid walked past me and asked his mother if I was dead. A large, male nurse walked over and picked me up. I asked him what happened and he told me what he saw.

Apparently, the color was draining from my face as I was explaining to the nurse that I was afraid of needles. Totally ignoring my pleas, the nurse missed my vein several times and decided to try the other arm. She made two attempts there and I passed out. I was sitting on a chair with my arm on a rolling tray so when I passed out, I slid out of the chair and on to the floor. When I slid out of the chair, my arm bent and jammed the needle into my arm. The vial snapped off and the blood went everywhere. I also managed to crack my head on the chair and the floor. Haddock (large male nurse whose name I totally remember because he was so kind) went over and removed the needle from my arm before they brought the smelling salts over.

As he was telling me the story, Haddock put a cold washcloth on my forehead and told me to lie on the gurney for a few minutes. He brought over cookies and orange juice since I’d been fasting for 12 hours. Another nurse brought me some scrubs so that I could change out of my clothes, which now looked like they’d been used on the set of some slasher movie.

I had a 9 inch bruise on my arm for weeks and they never called back to reschedule my appointment.

I changed healthcare providers during the next open enrollment.

So now maybe you understand why I was less than thrilled when I found out that I was going to have blood drawn again. I am happy to say that I survived the trauma. My new doctor is wonderful and very understanding of my phobia. He brought a nurse in to sit next to me and distract me while he was taking blood. He hit the vein on the first try. He didn’t make me feel like a total idiot for getting woosy and he must have known my ears were ringing because he told me I could lie there as long as I needed before getting up.

As I got up to leave, I apologized for the ridiculousness of my fear and thanked him for being so understanding.

“Hey, at least I know you’ll never be a heroin addict.”

I never really thought of it that way but I enjoy the fact that he managed to put a positive spin on my fear.