I get a flu shot every year, and it never hurts 
When I think of it, I don’t remember any painful shot, except for a tetanus (I think) shot when I was a kid.
Huh!!! :eek:
This article has nothing to do with the OP but it is on vaccines and I thought Dopers might be interested in reading it. The article is from Scientific American and details why we need a better pertussis vaccine. Part of the problem is the anti-vax nuts helped weaken the older one in the first place. So we substituted a newer vaccine that has potentially less side effects but is simply not as effective as the old one.
Butbutbut a shot in the eye is tantamount to a shot right into one’s very soul! Can you #14 needle do even that?
Okay, some of my observations:
It seems very variable. I had tetanus boosters circa 1975, 85, 95, and 2005. ONE of those left my are seriously sore for a week (1995, IIRC), while the others I barely ever even felt. WTF?
I think it’s a least partly a matter of “desensitization”, better known as “getting used to it.” In the 1970’s, shots and blood draws often made me feel very faint. Immediately after that 1975 tetanus shot, I felt fine . . . until the nurse said I should sit in the waiting room a while just in case I felt faint. THEN I instantly damn near fainted, and had to lie down for about three hours before I was able to crawl out of there. That didn’t happen with any subsequent tetanus shots.
I began getting annual flu shots circa 2002. They bothered me slightly for the first two or three years, and not at all since then.
I got the shingles shot about a year ago. It felt indistinguishable from a flu shot, which is to say, no sweat.
About the same time as that, I got the pneumonia shot. Different story. This shot took about a full minute to administer, as opposed to the 0.5-second flu and shingles shots. And when he was done, there was blood to be mopped up :eek: (Yes, even off the floor, because he dropped the swab. :o ) I made it out to the parking lot and into my car, and fainted in the driver’s seat.
Blood draws used to bother me somewhat. Especially when the technician is gossiping with the technician at the next window, about how hot the summer weather is, with all the air conditioning out and all the patients fainting left and right. (Yeah, that really happened.) Like the flu shots, they got less bothersome over time, but they are variable too. By the time I got to savor my first (and second and third) IV needles, I had no sweat with them. I was astonished to find that, after an IV needle is in my arm or hand for about two minutes, I didn’t even feel it there any more!
What are you rebelling against, doc?
For what it’s worth, I get monthly B12 shots and tell the nurse to stick me straight in the middle of one of my tats. No fuss, no muss.
Though I’m willing to swear that getting inked hurt worse than my last tetanus shot. Stepped on a nail. THAT hurt, the shot made me sore, the tatts smarted!
But most likely, he never saw the bullet coming, and actually may not have initially felt it (shock and all).
I have a few tats, but still react badly to shots if I watch them being administered.
If I just look away and tell the person, “Go for it,” I hardly feel it.
Some guys: tattoo needle = ok, syringe = not ok.
Me: insect (even a hornet) crawling up my arm = ok, arachnid crawling up my arm = get a chainsaw and lop it off at the shoulder!
Phobias are irrational and subtle. Except for arachnophobia-that shit makes perfect sense because spiders are evil.
:eek:
Why am I reading this thread???
I hate needles. I can watch crappy ninja movies where they punch into a guys chest, rip out his still beating heart and eat it, but if the commercial is about the flu shot I have to change the channel.
(Dang, I need a flu shot soon here don’t I)
I do recall my recent tetanus booster giving me a sore arm. Or it might have been the Hep A vaccine I got at the same time. (It was before a trip) I think I got a third one too, but I don’t remember what it was. Tattoos are right out with me though.
I once tried to do a FNA on a (tattooed) lady, who totally freaked out when the numbing needle touched her skin. She rescheduled for a repeat attempt with anesthesia.
Long story short, the anesthesiologist’s iv infiltrated, causing way more pain than a little ol’ FNA ever would. :smack:
A few weeks later, I had another, somewhat timid patient (who reported serious lidocaine allergy) do just fine, even without local anesthetic.
Go figure. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
EXCEPT-
a. The big dogs do whine the loudest.
b. Anyone who says they have a “high pain tolerance” has a low pain tolerance.
I had the set of shots for the HPV vaccine and I don’t recall them being unusually painful.
Now, getting a shot into my foot for anesthesia before having a lipoma removed from my toe, THAT hurt. I’d say easily in the top three so far as the most pain I’ve been in.
Quadgop, you assumed that he knew that his tattoos were made with a needle, that he was fully conscious when the tats were made, and that it was of his own volition.
Given that he had several dozen of them, most of them relatively neatly done, including the facial swastika, leads me to believe that it’s a reasonable assumption.
That and him telling me he wasn’t afraid of tattoo needles but hated shots.
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to assume someone with that many tattoos doesn’t know tattoos are made with needles.
That is ridiculously true. I’ve given plenty of shots and I suspect that the ones who mention pain tolerance are really fearful about the pain. It’s false braggadocio to try to psyche themselves up.
You know who else hated Nazis? Everybody!
Fuck it, [del]Dude[/del] Martini, let’s go bowling.
And how do you know they weren’t temporary tattoos he collected from Cracker Jack boxes?
The thing that cracks me up is that virtually everyone I see sporting
Nazi tattoos would have been the first on the bus in the real Reich.