When I was younger, I always liked going to the doctor. Most likely because I would get a lot of attention and they were never looking at anything serious. My love for the doctor stopped abruptly though, when I actually had a serious problem. One Saturday afternoon, I was hanging out with my friend and we were doing our nails. All of a sudden, my back began to feel like an extremely sharp blade was being plunged into it. I looked at my friend with the most fearful expression she’s ever seen and I started panicking while telling her how bad my back hurt. In and out for the rest of the day, I had flashes of severe pain about every ten minutes or so. Usually, when I get random aches for no reason it goes away within a day, so when the next day came around and I was still crying from the pain, I decided to tell my dad. As Sunday rolled into Monday the stabs in my back rolled into throbbing in my left arm. Because of the spreading pain and the fact it seemed to get worse as the days went on, my dad decided to make me a doctor's appointment. When I finally got into the private room with my doctor, I told him all of my symptoms. As I was talking, I saw his face grow more and more worried with every word. Before he told me anything, he asked me to go get my dad, which is never a good sign at the hospital. He explained to my dad and I that he believes all of my symptoms point to having blood clots, and we would need some tests taken. The next seven words alone caused me to be so terrified that I forgot how to breathe. We need to take a blood test. Immediately, I broke down in tears. For some background, I have never been afraid of anything. I can deal with heights, closed spaces, clowns, bugs, and pretty much anything else. Needles are my breaking point. I become like a feral cat when anybody is near me with a needle. Needless to say, I tried to turn down the test but they wouldn’t let me.

Not only did I have to get my blood drawn, but I also had to get a CT scan, which also required an IV. At that moment I knew that it was going to be a long day. Tears continued to stream down my face as I defeatedly walked into the lab. A nice lady, about 25 years old, sat me down in her workstation and immediately knew what I was crying about. “Don’t want me to take blood I’m assuming,” she said while pulling out the needle. I hopelessly replied with “no,” realizing that no matter what I said, she wouldn’t stop. As she began to clean my arm and put a band around it, I began to breathe much heavier and I could start to feel my head spin. That's when the phlebotomy technician quickly cut me off by saying “Hey, you gotta calm down. Otherwise, a bunch of doctors will rush in here thinking you are having a panic attack and you really don’t want that.” Even though she probably just says that to the kids that are really scared, I still did my best to slow my breathing and calm down so I could get this over with. Eventually, she drew enough blood to be satisfied with and sent me on my way. I knew that the pain I had just endured would be worse ten fold in the next few minutes. I quickly began crying again from the trauma I had just gone through, and because I knew that there was more to come.

The next step in the horrible process was going into radiology to get a scan of my blood vessels. I was instructed to lay down on the bed and have my right arm uncovered. It was around this time that it really started to set in that I had to get an IV and I could feel the terror rush through my entire body. I told the nice old lady who was the one putting in my IV that I have a huge phobia of needles, but she brushed me off and began putting the rubber band around my arm. About five minutes goes by of her searching for my veins and she just decided that she was just going to guess where one is and pray that she got it in. News flash: she did not get it in. After taking the missed IV out she decided to call in another doctor who is “better with the squirmy ones,” or at least that's what she told me. When the new lady came in, it was clear that she wanted to get this done fast. I was having a genuine panic attack at that point, and I was then informed that abnormal breathing can cause veins to shrink. The issue was that I was already freaking out, and it wasn’t voluntary. It was very hard to calm down when they both continued to try to jab my arm from both sides. Eventually, the second doctor called in an ultrasound machine and took me into a completely different room, because I guess she had enough of my nonsense. I was able to calm down in the smaller room with a much more comfortable chair, and she was finally able to insert the IV into a vein. And it only took 45 minutes, two people, and an ultrasound machine to do!

From there, the CT scan was a piece of cake. I layed down in the big white tube and I relaxed because I knew the hard part of this awful process was over. I slowly began to realize however, that if I hadn’t spent so much time panicking and breathing weirdly, I wouldn’t have had to try two times for an IV. I had made things much worse for myself by not controlling my mind and fear. My realization was quickly interrupted by the sound of the speaker telling me the scan was done. The lady that was originally supposed to put in the IV came back to the scan room to take it out. I’m pretty sure that she was purposefully being rough when taking it out, because it honestly hurt more when she removed it than when it went in. I finally got to walk back to my dad in the waiting room while silent tears fell out of my eyes. I also noticed that after the tests I became very dizzy. Even though I had just done a blood test, I think it was caused by the heavy breathing. At last, after four hours worth of crying, panic, and pain, we got to know the results in the tests. To my surprise, it turns out that I don’t have blood clots and I did all of that for nothing.

In the car on the way home I continued to cry. This was because I realized that I wasted so much time by being afraid of needles. Not only that, but at some point during my panicked haze, I lost my favorite necklace because I was so disoriented from the tears and thoughts about what just happened. A few hours later, I told my mom all about my adventure to the hospital and how they failed on the first attempt for the IV, and the response I got was not the one I expected. She started yelling at me because she was disappointed I didn’t just suck it up and let them jab me. Looking back at the whole situation I learned two things. The first is that I seriously need to learn how to control my fears and not let them take over me. I know if I just acted like all of it wasn’t a big deal, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. The second thing is that I really hate going to the hospital and I probably won’t enjoy it again. Even if I may not want to, I will still have to deal with needles many more times in my life, and maybe they aren’t as bad as I think they will be. Everybody needs to come face to face with their fears in life, and even though it wasn’t pretty when I faced mine, I still got through it.