I die a little inside every time a needle enters me; but I don’t mean that literally. Needles might be the second thing I fear the most about having sickle cell, the first would be sickle cell finally killing me.
For many, I’m sure the process of getting a blood test is summed up as a few seconds of sharp discomfort, but for a sickle cell suffer, things can get complicated.
You see, our veins are weak and frail. They either collapse at the smallest prick or nurses (and doctors in many cases) have trouble getting into them. There’s nothing more psychologically draining than having a nurse or doctor move a needle around inside your arm, desperately trying to prick it. Not only does it hurt, but it also crushes your soul after years of this same reoccurring experience.
When I’m admitted in hospital, things get even worse when it comes to needles. I’m poked and probed every single day without delay, so imagine the feeling of having a nurse prick you multiple times each occasion because it’s too difficult to find a good vein. When you’re in a sickle cell crisis, the chances are that your veins are even worse than they usually would be, making the job even harder than before.
And then there’s my good old friend (not really) the cannula. Boy, do I hate the cannula. As if three-or-four vein violations a day wasn’t bad enough, I need a needle stuck permanently inside me for the entirety of my stay at the hospital (over a month in some cases). The thing is with the cannula is that it’s supposed to be removed and reinserted in a new vein every week, but my hospital is so busy that this never happens. That means that after a while, when I get my medicine injected into my cannula I feel a sting that burns as each drop of antibiotics enters through the vein.
In one case, which I wrote about in my crisis 2015 article, my hand actually started to inflate while the injection was going in because my hand was swelling up after having the cannula in so long. It was one of the scariest things I’ve experienced in hospital. If you’re a sufferer and this is something you go through, please get on their cases about changing the veins every week.
My fear of the needle is so severe that I couldn’t find images for this article without cringing and feeling my body tense up. So bad that I couldn’t recite a piece of fiction I wrote about sickle cell to a group of writers without tearing up and tensing my body up while seated before them. Because reading back what I wrote about the needles brought back all those traumatic experiences. My mistake for thinking I could be artsy about my pain.
You’d think that after all these years of being pricked in the arm that someone would be completely fine with needles. But nope, every single time one enters my body I fear that repeated violation of the needle coming back inside me 3-4 times. That feeling of the needle digging through my skin as the nurse realizes they missed the vein and must find it so that they don’t have to warn me of another sharp scratch.
So I will always fear the needle. Because its constant violations of my body are a reminder of all the internal pain and trauma I’ve suffered.