I have always been a magnet for stepping on sharp objects. At five, I had a nail go through my foot. I’ve impaled my toosties on more pins than I care to remember, and once skewered a toe (accidentally) with a sewing needle. The family joke when something sharp is lost on the floor is, “Where’s Lou? She’ll find it!” And I will, painfully.

One Halloween my little brother, Bernie, was playing with toothpicks on a woven rug. As luck would have it, I stepped on one. It hurt quite a bit. I turned my foot over to yank it out, because it felt like something was there, but to my surprise, saw nothing. I gingerly poked around, but really couldn’t tell if anything was in my foot or not. The only evidence was a painful dimple on the ball of my foot and, after a few days, a little pus and swelling. Being a die hard Trick or Treater, I made the usual candy rounds anyway, limping from house to house laden with candy. By the end of the night, my foot really hurt.

Six days later, on my eleventh birthday, convinced that something was not right, my mother took me to the Dr. for an x-ray, which proved nothing. The Dr. agreed that something was probably in my foot, and so we set up an appointment with a surgeon. Three days later I was laying on my stomach in a surgery clinic reading a Soup book, trying to distract myself from the fact that they were about to slice open my foot and go digging around. The nurse prepared the anaesthetic, putting it in a needle that I am certain was as thick as my finger, and then jabbed it into the ball of my foot with sadistic glee.

At this point in the story, my mother’s version and mine vary dramatically. At the time, I was certain I merely squealed into the pillow as tears ran down my face. Soon after the procedure, my mother informed me that I probably scared away patients in the waiting room because I screamed so insanely loud people in Nebraska could hear me. At any rate, it hurt like you wouldn’t believe. There are billions of nerve endings in the bottom of your foot, and everyone of mine were on fire and ready to jump ship. The nurse kept wiggling the needle around saying that when I couldn’t feel it any more she would take it out. After a minute or two, either the numbness set in or I had gone to a happy place where I no longer felt pain, and they sliced open my foot. After several minutes of not finding anything and threatening that they might just have to close it up and try again next week, (as if I would have showed up for that!) they extracted an inch long piece of toothpick.

This event marked a major turn of events in my life. Up until this day, I had always been a trooper when it came to shots. I didn’t like them, but I was a tough kid and handled them pretty well. Here, at the wellsprings of my adolescence, that ability to cope with shots was completely destroyed. It took five nurses the next year when it came time to receive my MMR booster at school. Two to hold me, one to get me orange juice and a donut because I was lightheaded, one to stare directly into my traumatized face and talk me to distraction, and one to poke me. Every shot became an anxiety attack waiting to happen. I thought I would never recover. They don’t make a twelve step program for shot phobias.

Or so I thought. Nine years later I was married and expecting my first child. I went into pre term labor and landed in the hospital for seven unending weeks, during which time, my daily medications included three to six shots to keep the contractions at bay. I admit, the first few days were pretty rough. I was worried about my baby, worried about being in a hospital all alone, an hour and a half away from home, and the constant stream of shots didn’t help my stress level any. But, humans are adaptable creatures, and within three weeks I had gone from biting my cheeks and trying not to cry to laughing my head off at the entire situation.

Whenever a new nurse would have the job of administering my shots, she would inevitably ask which arm I wanted it in. I usually rotated arms, so I’d pick which ever one wasn’t used last. The nurse would roll up the sleeve to my hospital gown, and it never failed that I there would be an audible gasp, and the occasional profanity, at the sight of my completely black and blue upper arm. The nurse would always ask, “Are you sure you want it in this arm?” To which I would always suggest that she use the other one if she preferred, since it really made no never mind to me. So she would go for the other arm, which was just as abused as the first.

This kept me entertained for weeks, and often got me extra desserts when the nurses really felt badly for me. They also turned a blind eye when the pizza delivery guy showed up. After seven weeks of shots, I had a healthy baby boy and was completely cured of my shot hang up.