Joy and the Needle

Ever heard the story of David and Goliath? Well, in this instance, I am Goliath!

In the aftermath of my accident last year, I needed to go to the hospital and get some shots. One of the things that has remained consistent in my life since childhood is my hatred of needles.

I have always hated needles

My aunts will always tell stories about how it would take about 4 people to hold me down so my mum could inject me as a child because my legs could never stay still long enough for me to stand on my own. As a young girl, the easiest way to get me to do whatever you wanted was to threaten me with injections, and as expected from a typical African mum, mine milked that cow super dry.

Over time, I have learned to tolerate getting blood drawn or injections that go in the vein. However, injections into my gluteal muscles or any other muscle from the waist down is a hard no for me. I have so many traumatic memories of this from childhood and have managed to avoid it for the majority of my adulthood, until that fateful day.

An unexpected turn of events

I'm pretty sure when those lovely nurses woke up that morning, they couldn't have foreseen the drama that day was about to bring their way.

The poor nurse walked in carrying the tray containing the needle and bottle. She opened the needle gently, handling it like one would handle a newborn baby. She inserted it into the bottle cap and pulled the bottle contents into the needle. She then looked at me and smiled; I smiled back and stretched out the arm with the juiciest veins on them.

I didn't expect the next words I heard. "Please pull down your pants."

"Huh?" I replied.

The injection could only be done in the gluteal muscle

When I left my house that day, those were not words I had expected to hear; not from the nurse, and certainly not in that context.

"I'm sorry, but I do not get injected on my bum-bum," I replied, with that childhood trauma peeking through the curtain, hard.

She smiled and tried to reassure me that it would be fine. Meanwhile, in my mind, I was thinking, "This lady knows not what she's in for." I asked if she could inject me in the veins instead, but she explained that this particular one could only be injected into the gluteal muscle.

Boy, it was about to be a long day.

My restless legs syndrome was in full effect

She and I went back and forth for over 30 minutes with a couple of other nurses joining us. I think some of them just found it funny that a grown woman was flat-out acting like a child.

To make it worse, my restless legs syndrome (RLS) was in full effect as it sometimes is when I'm anxious or panicking, so I got up and started pacing. "How am I supposed to get injected when I can't even stay still? This is a disaster," I thought. If only I knew how right I was in that moment.

I could see the chaos now in my mind's eye. The doctor eventually came in to see what the ruckus was about, and I, on the other hand, was now so embarrassed that I decided to get it over with.

Restless legs and injections can be a bad mix

My legs wouldn't stop moving and my heart was in my throat! I pulled down my pants, bent over, and the moment the needle went in, jerk! My legs moved, my muscles tensed, and I heard the nurse and doctor gasp audibly. The needle had broken inside my gluteal muscle.

I won't even go into the gory details that followed, but let's just say it was a long 48 hours, and I am now doubly traumatized.

If you have restless legs, intramuscular injections can be a bad idea. But that's, of course, my personal opinion. I may be biased, but hey, I have a scar to buttress my argument.