Pins and needles

Some of you may know that for the majority of my life I have been terribly afraid of needles. Despite getting several piercings, and being OK with blood tests if I have to, the idea of being vaccinated against anything was my biggest nightmare.

Knowing that the world is full of all sorts of delightful diseases, however, it’s something I have known I would have to face before venturing off into the wild. Fortuitously, before we left NZ, a friend of mine learned EMDR and needed someone to practice on, so I got a couple of free therapy sessions for the old needle phobia. After a couple of sessions, though, our work schedules changed and we never finished the therapy.

I therefore left NZ un-vaccinated. Shock! Horror! Who knows what I might have caught in Australia?!

With visits to South East Asia, South America, and Africa planned though, the vaccinations aren’t really something I can just avoid forever. Fortuitously again, I was at a training day for work at the end of last year and the presenter mentioned hypnotherapy for phobias. I contacted her after the training to find out more, and not only could her work provide the therapy, but my work would actually pay for me to go do it! How’s that for a perk?!

I didn’t manage to make the appointment before we went to Bali (so we just had to stay away from the monkeys – damn it!), but scheduled a time once we got back.

Four sessions later, it was time to face my fear.

I sat nervously in the waiting room with Aaron, listening to the nurses who sat behind the desk telling hilarious stories about blood draws where the blood was just spurting from people’s arms, and quietly turning green.

The doctor seemed to take forever, and then tried to convince us to get every vaccination available – even the ones we have already had! I swear, he must have had shares in the vaccine company.

Once we convinced him that we didn’t need another polio vaccine (having both had four doses as children), and that Aaron really is comfortable with the possibility that his childhood Hepatitis B vaccination might have worn off (even if mine hasn’t and we had them in the same town only a few months apart) as he isn’t planning to have unprotected sex or share needles with infected people, he left us to meet with the nurse.

Then called her away again to help him with a blood draw, right as I was getting really nervous.

While she drew up the vaccines and chatted away to us, my anxiety got higher and higher. I tried to get Aaron to do some EMDR with me, but it didn’t help.

Scared that the hypnotherapy hadn’t worked at all, I sat in the chair and rolled up my sleeve. My heart was beating double time, my palms felt like they were sweating the contents of Lake Victoria, and I was trying really hard to relax my arm so it wouldn’t hurt as much.

The nurse took my arm, told me to relax the muscle and wiggle my toes, and then I felt the needle go in. It stung a little, and lasted a couple of seconds, and then that was it. I was vaccinated against yellow fever.

Then it was Aaron’s turn.

Then she drew up the vaccines for tetanus, rabies, and Japanese encephalitis and we did it all over again three more times.

And ya know what? It wasn’t that bad. In fact, I’m not sure what I was panicking about all these years.

This afternoon we went back for the second dose of rabies vaccine and our meningococcal meningitis shot, and I felt a tiny bit nervous as I sat in the waiting room. A tiny bit more as I sat in the chair. And then it was done. I even watched her give Aaron his shots first, and nothing. No mad panic.

Three weeks from now we get the last pre-exposure rabies shot and our hepatitis A/typhoid combined vaccine, and then that’s it.

Six diseases. Eight needles. Four hypnotherapy sessions. And one huge obstacle overcome.