When are people going to learn that we can’t keep coddling these vile, savage beasts?!

Ok, so maybe my gratuitous flesh wound wasn’t inflicted by one of Woody Woodpecker’s ravenous relatives, but over the years I’ve found that one tends to get a little more sympathy from people with regards to wounds inflicted by wild animals than what’s otherwise deemed just a simple visit to the doctor’s office.  Apparently there are some people in this world who aren’t absolutely petrified when it comes to needles, and to those people I have only two words for you – you’re crazy.

You see, I’ve never really been what you might consider a fan of needles, all the way back to when my Mom tried to take me in for shots when I was seven and she had to chase me down the street as I ran away from the evil nurse lady all the way home. Unfortunately these days I no longer live merely a block away from The Stabbing Place where inoculations and blood work transpire, so I don’t exactly have much of an exit plan anymore, and besides, something tells me that a fully grown man running away is going to be perceived somewhat differently than when I fled previously in my kindergarten years.  Apparently that youthful innocence is something that slips away once you’ve graduated from high school, and moved away from home, and begun contributing to a 401k…

But regardless of what anybody else says, I still cringe when the doctor tells me that “she’s going to need a little blood work,” as if it’s akin to just signing a couple of forms or telling her my opinion about global warming.  Here’s a hint: two of those three things can take place without anyone puncturing my skin with a sharp implement, and not for nothing, but it was my understanding that typically anything puncturing anything else is generally regarded as a “bad thing” in pretty much every scenario imaginable, so I guess I’m just a little lost as to why those same standards aren’t held true when it comes to sucking fluids out of my living body as well!

Heck , we could even take this a step further and tie it into last month’s humor column theme of Tech Month by begging the question, “With everything that science and technology has brought us over the years, why don’t we have any less intrusive ways of drawing blood yet?!” I mean, maybe we’re not exactly to the point of just beaming it out of my body just yet, but by now I would’ve hoped that we’d at least be able to start showing progress of moving away from the archaic concept of basically sucking it out of patients with a straw! In medieval times, they used leeches to suck the blood (and hopefully toxins) from a person’s body, but at least the leeches were gentle on the skin and didn’t take tube after tube of the stuff “just in case…”

I’ll bet you they never had to hear the leeches say encouragingly, “Oh, this will be easy – you’ve got good veins,” either!  As if I’ve been hitting the gym a lot, not to tone my guns and tighten up my abs, but mostly just to accentuate my veins.

The truth is, I’ll probably never be ok with needles and getting blood drawn, which sucks because chronologically speaking, I’m getting “older” and thus the medical reasons for anyone needing to review my blood are statistically increasing.  Maybe if they could add rum and pineapple juice to the list of approved beverages one is allowed to consume while “fasting” prior to blood work, that might help to lessen the anxiety that eventually makes way for fear, terror, and my general cowering in the presence of needles, but ultimately, I’m thinking that pretty much anything involving an unusually chipper nurse, an extra-groggy me first thing in the morning, and a needle roughly the size of the Seattle Space Needle is going to forever remain disheartening in my books right up until the bitter end.

Also, I’ve got a feeling that the hair removal to come when this tape holding the cotton ball in place gets ripped off my arm is really going to hurt, too.  The horror just never ends around here, I tell ya…