0123blog

A Little Pinch

I feel like I’m trapped in a coal mine, just me and the canary and I get a message that my rescue has been delayed and they won’t get to me for three days and I watch on the second day as the canary keels over, dead.

I feel like there has been a miraculous breakthrough in the battle against COVID19 and that the vaccine will be available “soon” and I think of when I would go with my mother to the store and ask when we could leave and she says “soon” and I come to quickly understand that “soon” is a meaningless word that adults use when they want to shut up a winy child and when they have no idea of when they will leave the store or when the vaccine will be available.

I particularly get annoyed at the Facebook posting that Joan just got her shot at the ShopRite in Westfield or that Andrew got his at the urgicare center in Bergenfield while every time I look up the places where vaccinations are offered, I see a message that says something like “are you kidding” or try back sometime in 2022 because there are no appointments available, there are no appointments being accepted and there probably won’t be any vaccine left by the time my name pops up, ending with a frowning meme face.

More than 400,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S. so yes, I want to get my two doses of the vaccine so I can feel relatively safe and resume going to restaurants, book stores, bars, gyms and other places that I have avoided since the pandemic began. I do not believe that the vaccine carries tiny monitors so that Bill Gates can track my movement; I don’t believe the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines contains the SARS-CoV-2 virus; I don’t believe either vaccine will give me COVID19; and I don’t fear side effects if the trade off is that I don’t have to wake up dead and side effects so far have been found to be relatively mild.

I do not suffer trypanophobia or an exaggerated, hyper-fear of needles so I have no problem with getting the vaccination even if it feels like “a little pinch” or “a bit of discomfort,” as the well-intended doctors and dentists always said, knowing full well that “a little pinch” means a sharp pain and “a bit of discomfort” means approaching unbearable agony.

People who are particularly squeamish are told to distract themselves and relax, and if the phobia is really bad, to call to cancel various appointments to the point where the doctor tells you to find another practitioner and you have succeeded in avoiding the needle but then you risk a horrible, painful and early and preventable death.

I was not always so brave and I distinctly remember as a child and I was home sick when Dr. Babigian made the house call, opened up his black bag, pulled out the needle and told me to turn over and drop my draws and that it would only be a “little pinch” upon which after I wanted to look him in the eye and call him a big fat liar but being too young I probably just cried a little. It seemed all needles were given intra-muscularly in the butt except for the smallpox vaccinations that left a telltale scar on your arm for the rest of your life. Now, most needles are administered in the arm or the thigh.

I look away when getting a needle so that I don’t accidentally move my arm and have to get a second shot, though my daughter insists on looking when she gets a shot because she says it’s safer that way. Giving blood is a whole another experience where any movement will shift the needle, requiring another injection while the phlebotomist may also have to move the needle a bit to speed up the blood flow and this is where it really hurts like “a little pinch.”

As adults we may complain a little about shots but children really have a lot to kvetch about. In 1962, kids got a total of five shots for polio, smallpox and DTP to avoid diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus. By 1983, the youngster got 24 shots including multiple doses for DTP, OPV and MMR. By 2016, the lucky lads and lassies had to stand for 72 doses for everything from diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, measles, mumps, rubella, polio, chicken pox, pneumococcal disease, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal disease, HPV, rotavirus, Hib, and flu.

The idea behind the syringe probably has its origins in prehistory with the use of blowpipes, poison-tipped darts and other weapons and fortunately we have progressed. The Greeks used hollow reeds to push oil, ointments and creams into body orifices and the Egyptians got the medicine in the body through enemas or suction from nasal mucous and doesn’t that sound like fun.

In 1656, Christopher Wren performed the first intravenous injection when he cut a dog’s skin to expose a vein and used a goose quill canulae to inject the poor pooch with alcohol. It was not very safe or effective but it was a start and where was PETA when you needed it?

Ignorance of proper doses and unsterile equipment made early techniques a bit dicey and it wasn’t until 1844 that the first hypodermic needle was made in Dublin by Francis Rynd. The basic design has remained unchanged though interchangeable parts and the use of plastic resulted in the almost universal use of disposable syringes and needles since the mid-1950s.