Should I get my feet ready to flee from this treatment room, from this medical centre to where, maybe to the Cliffs of Moher not far away from here? I’ve no guts to do this. Should I just give up?
So what I did was I made sure I was aware of the “Don’ts” on the instruction sheet. Just don’t do the “Don’ts”.
Looking at the huge needle on the syringe which would be used to lash in the capsule of hormone under the skin, I felt defeated in myself. After all I tried to console my wobbly self, ‘Calm down Sarah, just go on with it. You’ll be fine’ when I actually could feel my fingers getting really cold, now could be even colder than the nitrogen gas used in Cryotherapy.
“Ok a small prick now”, I told the patient as the gigantic needle about to poke into the skin overlying the muscle that I have pinched, pretending like that was my 100th time doing it.
‘Don’t go into the muscles! Don’t go into the muscles!’ That exclamation on the instruction sheet echoed in my head. “How far do I go then?”, I really hadn’t a clue but left it to my intuition. The patient slowly shrieked in pain, and mind you this wasn’t his first time getting this done on him. I’m definitely a dead body if I got it wrong. Who’s going to pay for another needle? And what if the patient shouts at me “Do you think I’m your toy that you can play with?”. Oh my God, that’s when my paranoia kicked in.
“Good job, lovely, keep going”, Lisa reassured me as she observed me doing it. I pressed the top, heard the click and took out the entire thing off the patient, trying hard to conform to the instructions. “We’re done”, I said to the patient while trying to sound confident like a pro. The patient was happy. “It was indeed much less painful than what I had before”, he commended.
What a compliment! But hey come here, how would it be in any way less painful than before when it was actually done by an expert? Or did I miss anything? I didn’t get the chance to even thank the patient for those sweet words before I realized, ‘Oh my God what’s that shiny thing in the needle? Did I not push that thing into under the patient’s skin?’
I was a dead meat. Like the one you see in the marketplace, completely.
I could feel the blood draining off my face down into my jugular veins; and I thought if I were to look at the mirror at that very second I would certainly be able to tell how pale and white my face had been, probably as white as the propofol reagent used in induction of anaesthesia in operation theatres, the same reagent that killed Michael Jackson in July.
I nearly fainted out of shock before being comforted by Lisa the nurse that she thought that capsule had actually gone in plus that precious capsule should be white in colour. I didn’t really feel relieved by that statement really, as I supposed capsules could be in any colour at all. And she hadn’t any experience in this implant thing. I was absolutely terrified realizing why did I want to play brave to begin with?
I darted out of the treatment room trying to escape from the man, praying that Allah will help me while I waited for Dr Mary to come out and confirm that that tiny capsule has really gone in. I took my weight off my feet in the nurse’s room. It was a torture having to wait for Dr Mary to finish her current consultation. My hands nearly shook but I tried hard to relax and avoid being too dramatic.
At last Dr Mary finished her consultation with her patient and came in to have a look at the needle and syringe. Guess what, she confirmed that the capsule has really gone in and congratulated me for that. Alhamdulillah!
It paid off! Achievement of the day :)
Moral of the story:
“Everything must have its first time”
“Confront the fear, the fear will disappear” -- my motto ;)
P/s: Remember the patient told me that my work wasn’t as painful as the one he had had before? I thought it could be because of my icy fingers. Coldness does give pain relief to some extent because it benumbs the skin. And the previous healthcare experts’ injections were more painful because they were already pro that their fingers didn’t feel cold out of anxiety. That’s my blatant theory. Hehe. Wallahu’alam.
