Of course, needles are already pretty darned close to painless. Which leads me to suspect that needle phobia is due to something other than pain, which means that the same trigger might just as well become associated with jet injectors.
I have a blood condition and I reckon between my medicine and all the testing I get close to 100 needles stuck into me every year. They usually don’t hurt…
Yeah, if it was about the pain, stubbing my toe would be so much more terrifying. With my first Covid injection, I remember thinking, I barely felt that at all! Maybe the phobia is not going to hit me this time! Than I thought, uh oh, my head is fizzing. Then I thought, why is somebody shaking my arm and trying to get me to wake up?
I’m familiar with 8 year olds (I have another one, too) and phobias. What she experienced was far beyond normal fear for her age. It was full irrational panic. She’s not really a small child at this point. She can talk rationally about how great it will be to be vaccinated, and be told it won’t really hurt more than a slight pinch, but the needle makes her panic. She also has a spider phobia. I’m astounded that she was able to say “just do it” in the state she was in. It speaks to her being able to overcome the panic, for just a moment, not to her not really being in a panic.
I mean, think what you will, but I’m positive it is a phobia at this point, which is getting worse, not better as she gets older.
Of course you know your child and I wasn’t there so I will certainly not tell you otherwise! Hope she is better next time.
I don’t think it’s the pain either. Hubs has multiple piercings and tattoos. He has never had an issue with body mods. He passes out when he gets a shot. He says he doesn’t remember when it started, he thinks he’s always been that way.
Now that’s really counterintuitive. Can he articulate why - is it because a tattoo needle is very short? Is the phobia associated with the notion of a longer needling “entering your body”?
It truly is very counterintuitive and he can’t express why. I doubt the needle size is an issue, shot givers can get really sneaky with folks like him, so he usually doesn’t see the needle.
He gets cortisone shots in the back of his shoulder every six weeks, he looks forward to them because they help his pain. He can’t see what his doctor is doing or the needles but he goes out with the first shot and never notices the second one because I don’t snap the ammonia cap until the doctor is putting the bandages on.
I spent much of my life being mildly needle-phobic, although I’ve gotten over that. Here is one anecdote that I think may have caused that:
It’s about suggestibility. When I was a young’un, I got taken to the doctor every year for an annual physical exam. They were much more comprehensive than any annual physical exams I’ve had for many years. Everything about those exams terrified me. The very sight of a jar of cotton swabs terrified me.
After each such exam, the doc sent me to the lab across the street for the obligatory blood test. In those days, at that lab, they sat me down in a little room with walls covered with shelves of materials like bandages and glassware and stuff, which was scary enough. And there was a microscope on the table.
I remember that there was a time when I wanted to watch them draw the blood. But the technician always said “Ohhhh, don’t loooook! Turn your headdd! Look the other waaaaaay!” I think that taught me that there was something really scary about needles.
After the blood was drawn, the tech would do the counts manually, right there on the spot. She (it was usually a she) put a drop on a glass slide, and used the edge of another slide to smear it out across the slide. Then she stuck it under the microscope. They used a little hand counter (like you see people use at the entrance to museums or movie theaters sometimes) to count red cells, then white cells. They always let me look through the microscope and see the red and white cells.
Here’s yet another suggestion why shots are scary. I suspect that this would be more of a problem for adults than children.
I am moderately phobic about getting medicines stuck into me, whether by pills, or shots, or any other route. The side effects – or even the hypothetical possible side effects – scare me. Even if they are mild.
Drugs that I am familiar with, and cause at most minimal side effects, don’t bother me (too much). Drugs that I am familiar with that cause more than trivial side effects always alarm me. And drugs that I am not familiar with, that I am taking for the first time, I am always phobic about.
So any kind of shot or pill that I am getting for the first time, scares me. Needles for blood draws used to scare me just by extension of that, I suspect. That hasn’t been a problem for me for the last 20 years or so.
I asked hubs about getting vaccinated when he joined the military and he said he didn’t pass out from the gun, it was a non-event. So, it’s not getting a foreign substance that isn’t ink injected into his body that knocks him out. Phobias are irrational fears. Thank goodness he’s not phobic about more common things like spiders or dead mice.
I just learned that there are walk-in times and appointments available for kids to get covid shots at the children’s hospital. They advertise that they have freezing spray and also a vibration device to prevent pain, and lots of experience with distraction. So, my kids will probably get their second shot there. They are scheduled for flu shots tomorrow, so we’ll see how that goes. It doesn’t look like the children’s hospital is offering those, unfortunately.
I really wish there was a nose spray option, though.
Best of luck!
Phobias do have logic behind them, but the logic doesn’t work the way you think it does. Say you’re a kid, and you’re going to the doctor for your first shots (or at least, your first shots you can remember). There’s a strange person there, in a room with all sorts of weird things on shelves, and a funny smell, and people saying things like “Oh, you’re so brave” and “This will only hurt a little”. All of those things are things that it’s reasonable to be a little bit afraid of. But then your brain takes all of those little things, and associates them all with one specific aspect of the experience, and says “if this one thing is associated with ALL of those scary things, then it must be very scary indeed!”. And so you end up with a phobia of needles used for medical injections.
Then, years later, you go back for an injection via jetspray. The strange man is still there, and the weird things on shelves, and the funny smell, and so on. But those things don’t matter any more, because their fear has all been transferred to the needle, and the needle isn’t there any more. So the jetspray isn’t scary, just by virtue of the fact that it’s different from the thing that you’ve already decided was scary.
On the other hand, if we always used jetsprays, right from the start, then that could be what ends up carrying the full burden of scare, and you might need to switch to using a needle, for jet-phobic patients.
I have the same issue with my 7-year-old. It was noticeable but manageable at 3, but when I took her in last time to get her first Covid shot, I had to physically restrain her almost MMA style. It sucked, but she actually ended up being okay with it afterwards so far as I could tell. We’ll see how shot two goes. I really don’t know how best to navigate this, as talking just prolongs the stress — and I’ve done that before for the PCR test, and my tack at the point is just to get it over quickly and deal with the fallout later. I hopefully didn’t traumatize her — and she does seem to be okay with it, but, man it sucks.
Yeah, for something truly necessary, like a covid test or vaccination, it’s really hard to know what to do in that moment.
I wasn’t there for my daughter’s flu shot, but apparently it took half an hour, and the pharmacy guy was super nice, but was about to call it off when she said OK, do it.
So, we can’t go that route again.
If we can use the children’s hospital, we will, though, as I think they’ll know how to get it done.
I don’t know if this would be helpful for your little ones, but hubs has a bit of a routine that seems to help when he’s getting a shot. Everything is arranged in advance, by phone is best for him. He is shown into a room with a gurney or bed and told to relax. He takes his shirt off and lays down on his stomach facing away from the door. The shot giver comes in, verifies his name and arm, gives him the shot, hubs passes out, the shot giver puts a bandage on hubs and then leaves. I pop the ammonia cap, hubs wakes up, puts his shirt back on and we are ready to go.
It’s not the pain, it’s something else that he’s afraid of and being able to “deny” that a shot is going to happen until it does helps his discomfort levels a bunch.
Your kids are probably too smart to fall for something like this but its worth a try…