Ah, yes, the big brave Aussie is afraid of little tiny sticks of laser-etched steel. Go ahead, laugh. I laugh as well, to a point (was that intentional? Who knows!).
I don’t know what exactly it is about being stabbed brutally with these little pinpricks of metal. It sounds completely irrational, truly. Millions of people every day have to inject themselves just to stay alive, and I am reduced to a quivering mass of blubbering flesh at the mere idea of going near a doctor – especially one I know who likes the idea of stabbing patients time and time again.
The medical brainiacs usually call this ‘belonephobia’. for the the of me, I cannot deduce how ‘belone’ is derived, except if they are digging at we terrified throngs with an accusation of ‘baloney phobia’.
The last few times I’ve had to be injected were not so terrible – with some required foot surgery the lovely nurses used a pinprick of lidocaine before inserting the drip. On a scratch test to see what I’m allergic to, I made a clear action of not seeing how many scratches or how the scratches were going to be applied. For some cortisone injections, I bravely took what seemed to be a dozen Advil’s beforehand.
The worst recent experience was probably in 2007 where I had to give up some blood as part of my Green Card application. To cut a long story short, those harpies at the cesspit of the devil’s torture palace we went to were more than mercenary about how they locked me into the anti-escape chair against all efforts to declare my fear of needles of any sort, and combined with that they clearly had no skill in calming someone like me down.
I need to do a blood test very soon, and so I’ve resigned myself to researching various ways to deceive myself in relaxing enough that I won’t panic. But as the saying alludes to – we’re our own worst enemy.