Opinion: For some non-vaxxed, nasal spray now in clinical trials would be shot in the arm
In 2020, COVID-19 took over our lives, and when vaccines became available in 2021, we had hope.
People waited in long lines for first, then second shots that would save their lives and get the world moving again. Everyone was getting “the jab.” Everyone but me. I did not understand what was keeping me from just going and getting the shot. I tried to imagine every scenario where I would get it done, but nothing worked. I discussed it with my internist and with anyone else who would listen.
While I know there's a myriad of reasons people still haven't gotten the vaccine, my problem is different.
And I discovered my problem had a name: trypanophobia. So, at age 78, I began the difficult journey of remembering my life with needles. That journey, as I recall it, follows:
Shortly after the end of WWII, a former army doctor returned from duty and set up shop in a storefront on Market Street in Cheraw, S.C., a small town of about 5000, where my mom grew up. I do not recall his having either a nurse or receptionist in the beginning. He was a large imposing man with an ample belly and gruff manner. My mom took me to him. Guess I was sick. (We’d recently moved from Raleigh so my dad could join my mom’s family lumber business.)
Anyhow, I remember sitting on the exam table when he told her that I needed a shot, which he was preparing with his back to me. When he turned around, that needle looked enormous to me. I was too small to fight, so I somehow took flight down from the table, out onto the sidewalk and into McBride’s Market next door. Mom and the doctor, still brandishing that needle, chased me up and down the aisles until I was caught, held down, and injected.
I recall nothing else. I am quite sure I passed out.
My next memory, about 5 years later, was when my mom insisted I receive a typhoid shot if I was to be allowed to swim in our popular state park lake that summer. My dad took me to the clinic on Church Street where I bravely received the shot, returned to the car, and fainted on the way home. I awoke as my dad was frantically calling my name, the car idling on the side of the road. I recall a bit of a row between my parents that evening with dad declaring, “No more shots unless she is dying.”
In the years that followed, I recall incidents of fainting resulting in hitting my head and often breaking my glasses while witnessing my cat being vaccinated at the vet, while accompanying a friend into a doctor’s office for her to receive a shot, and also while trying to convince a nurse that I needed to lie down while she drew blood from a vein in my arm.
Why I never put all this together prior to COVID, I do not know. But here I am, nearly 8 decades later, still trying to figure all this out. That being said, I currently have blood drawn every 6 months and have been getting the procedure for years in the lab at my physician’s office. There is a note in my medical file directing the lab tech to take me into an exam room where I am allowed to lie down while the blood is drawn, for that lab tech to remain with me until I am steady on my feet, and to escort me to the exit. This works for me, but I understand it doesn’t for everyone. It takes a bit of work.
So why have I shared with you the history of my lifetime fear of needles and why should you care?
I know, according to my research, that as many as 25% of us have this phobia. Most of us are too embarrassed to admit it. I was too, at first.
Is the nasal spray, now in clinical trials, the answer? I’d like to think so since I’m now in the third year of isolating, just trying to stay alive. In a perfect world, there would be a vaccine that could be distributed safely to small labs like the one I go to.
Maybe I could get that shot and reenter society.
Asheville resident Susie Johnston says she has a phobia that affects about 25% of the adult population, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: For some non-vaxxed, nasal spray would be a shot in the arm
