Let’s talk phobias

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I’d be a useless Borg. And there’s a scene in Spectre that had me running for the exits.

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I suspect that my phobia is reasonably common. I find anything that involves the piercing of my skin terrifying and would go to any lengths to avoid it happening – if it were possible. This phobia clearly rules me out of most (all?) forms of body modification – earrings and the like. I can hear several members of my family and friendship circles breathing a huge sigh of relief about that … it would be soooo uncool.

For many years I did overcome this phobia to donate blood. But only if I could have a local anaesthetic beforehand. Yes, I do realise that’s two piercings rather than one – who said anything about my phobia needing to be rational? Donating blood came to an end a few years ago after 34 donations, when I had an experience so horrendous at a session I attended near Ilkeston that it still occasionally bothers me now (I’m sweating just a little bit more heavily than usual as I type this).

After my diagnosis with mantle cell lymphoma last year, injections, blood tests and cannulae have all become a regular part of my life. I don’t like any of them. They feel worse than the disease. So far. I look towards the opposite corner of the room as my skin is pierced AND close my eyes too, just in case I’ve developed the superpower that enables me to see out of the back of my head. I haven’t.

The last cannula I had put in was a couple of days ago when I had a CT scan. It wasn’t in for long (maybe 30 minutes or so) but I can still feel it now. That and the metallic taste left in my mouth by the contrast dye they injected into me through it. Rationally, the effects simply can’t last for that long. But that knowledge doesn’t make the continuing experience of feeling the cannula and the dye any less real to me.

When I do get around to needing chemotherapy, the hospital has promised(*) to fit me with a Hickman Line. That’s a long, hollow tube made from rubber that will go into a vein under my neck, be capped off – and will stay in me for months. I really can’t write any more about this at the moment, as simply looking up the details is too terrifying to contemplate.

I will be Borg. And I really don’t want to be.

(*) Not the right word, I know.

Inspired by Post40Bloggers writing prompt 66 – Let’s talk phobias!