On phobias and parenting

Last Friday, Lucy went in for her blood test to find out if she still has a peanut allergy (which we had discovered she had back in 2009, as per the blog ... see how would we remember *anything* without this blog?).  This is something we were supposed to do over a year ago, but what delayed us was the fact that Lucy has a pretty serious needle phobia.  Just like me.

Apparently there are several different names for this phobia -- aichmophobia, belonephobia, or enetophobia -- but whatever it is, I have, apparently, passed it along to her, despite my very best efforts not to do so.

My own phobia -- and I must note here, it is difficult for me to write this because I have a hard time talking about the subject (also, trigger warning: if you too have a needle phobia, you might not want to read this) -- dates to when I was in fourth grade and had to have a blood test for mono (I had it).  During the blood draw, taken in my pediatrician's office, which I can vividly call up in my memory, the needle broke in my arm.  And I passed out.  If I think about that memory too much, I can make myself pass out just from thinking about it.

I have to pause here and not re-read the paragraph above.

Suffice it to say, I have never recovered.  On the bright side, there is virtually no danger of me ever becoming an intravenous drug user, so, hey, no heroin for me, thanks!  On the other hand, there goes my potential career in phlebotomy.

I don't know that I was all that crazy about blood tests and shots before (I seem to recall a general dislike for them), but this fourth-grade experience sent me over the edge.  Thankfully, I was a lucky kid, health-wise, and never really had much need for needles. But then one time while I was in college, I was in the hospital, and I was given an IV. This, to me, is the worst kind of needle: the back of the hand kind, where you can see it constantly, and it's just awful.  Compounding that situation was the fact that they put that needle in the same arm to which they attached the automatic blood pressure cuff.  I don't know if you've experienced this, but when you're in a hospital bed with an automatic blood pressure cuff, it just keeps blowing up every so often (it seemed like every 10 minutes then but I assume it was not actually that often).  When this happens, if you're like me, your blood pressure GOES UP, because if you're like me, you have "white coat hypertension," which means seeing a doctor (in a white coat) makes you anxious and your body expresses its anxiety by raising your blood pressure. And in my case, the actual blood pressure CUFF creates this phenomenon. So basically, the arm was getting all puffed up like it does with the blood pressure cuff and then down on my hand, where the IV needle was, I was having this weird sensation because, well, I'm pretty sure that the IV and the blood pressure cuff should not be on the same arm.  So basically, the whole IV needle w/ arm cuff fully solidified my needle phobia (and also activated my hospital-room-induced hypertension).

My basic research (thanks Wikipedia!) tells me that there are several kinds of needle phobia, and I think I might have all of them.  Seriously.  The first is "vasovagal needle phobia: fear [of] the sight, thought, or feeling of needles or needle-like objects."  It involves the various physical reactions that I've always had to needles (near panic-attack, blood pressure rise, fainting).  Sounds like me.  But given my specific history, I suspect my phobia is also associative -- in that it's related to my own bad memories.  Both Jake and my dentist have suggested that I may also have what's called a hyperalgesic reaction to needles -- basically, some people have an inherited hypersensitivity to pain, and according to my dentist, I fit this profile.

When Lucy was born, I had needles galore, including a blood transfusion (I had what we'll call a "medically interesting" birthing situation that I won't get into here, but thank god it's over!).  It was not a good time, and I pretty much try not to think about it.  But one thing I do remember thinking then was that I did NOT want to pass my needle anxiety on to my daughter.  Because it really gets in the way (and not just of IV drug abuse).  It makes me delay getting my flu shot.  It makes me totally freak out when I need to get tested for various things.  And it makes it impossible for me to watch a lot of movies & TV shows that feature needles (seriously, it's not just a fear of getting a needle myself -- I can't watch someone *else* get a needle, making all medical TV shows off-limits for me).

So I wanted to stop it.  To this end, Jake almost always takes Lucy to her pediatrician and allergist appointments, and even to her dentist appointments.  (To date, there have been no needles at Lucy's dentist, but my own sad and terrifying dental history involved many -- far too many -- needles.  That's for a future post, though.)  I've tried very hard to never talk about my needle fears with her, and also to avoid being present for her needle experiences.

But she's got it anyway.  She has to be physically retrained to have a shot or a blood draw.  Prior to all medical appointments, she demands to know whether or not it is possible that there will be shots, and even when we say "no shots," she is clearly anxious about going to the doctor.  She walks into the exam room and insists "NO SHOTS!" before anyone can even weigh or examine her in any way.  And when there is a shot or blood draw, it's really ugly.  I see parents of patients in other rooms look with worry and horror towards the closed door of Lucy's exam room, where she is screaming like she's being disemboweled or something worse.  After it's over, she almost always says "oh, that wasn't bad at all!" in this incredibly pathetic voice but the lead-up period (even hours or sometimes days before) is just dreadful. 

When we talked to the allergist and the pediatrician about the needle phobia, they suggested we get a numbing agent to apply to her arm prior to the blood draw.  So we had that this time.  It seems to have helped, but still, her anxiety was so high that she was curled up in a ball, crying until they were able to get her calm enough to do it. (I wasn't there, this is as reported by Jake.)

In trying to help her cope with her anxiety, I've been working on quelling my own needle phobia.  I even got a flu shot last year, and I now regularly have to get blood draws to manage my thyroid condition, so that has, perhaps helped to desensitize me.  But not entirely.  Mostly, I talk A LOT to the phlebotomist about how anxious I am, and she uses the tiniest needle, and often calls in the more experienced phlebotomist to actually do the deed so there's no mistakes.  But I've realized that being able to talk (or write) rationally about how irrational a phobia is doesn't change the fact that sometimes, our bodies are going to react in ways that we *know* don't make sense.  I *know* that the needle isn't going to hurt that much, but still, just thinking about it, I can't stop my body from being terrified.  It is confusing to realize that terror can be in the body.  That it can just ignore whatever your brain is very rationally saying.

And I feel terrible thinking that I've passed this terrible feeling on to Lucy somehow.  I was intrigued, while writing this post, to read that there's some research that suggests that some traumatic memories could be passed down through our DNA!  Yikes! Did my needle-phobia pre-date my own experience, or did my own experience create Lucy's?  Or are we both super-sensitive to pain?  Or is it all a coincidence?

I've discovered another data point.  Earlier this summer, I gave Lucy a two-piece bathing suit.  She tried it on, and I told her she could go wear it to the pool.  She squealed: "but then my belly button would be out!"  I was taken aback, as I did not know she had any issues with this.  When I queried further, she explained that she didn't like her belly button, and that she didn't want it to be out in the air.  I was worried at first, that it was some kind of body-issue thing (of the sort that plagues young girls at ever-younger ages).  But it wasn't really a concern about someone *seeing* her belly button.  It was that she didn't like how it felt for it to be out in the air.  I let it go and gave her the one-piece bathing suit.

But it came up again last week.  She was walking by on her way upstairs after a bath, and I heard her muttering "I wish I didn't have a belly button!  Why do we even have belly buttons?  Why don't they just go away when you don't need them anymore?" She knows that the belly button is where she was once attached to me, and she gets that it was a necessary part of her growth.  But since it is no longer needed, why doesn't it just, like get covered up or something?  Like the way the plates in your head grow together into your skull after you're all done with the birth canal.  And I agree with her: why DO we need belly buttons once we're no longer attached to our mothers?

It turns out, she may have also inherited this belly button issue -- Omphalaphobia -- from me.  And I swear I have *never* discussed this with her.

The origin of my own belly button phobia I can absolutely date to the birth of my kid brother, when I was five years old.  After I tried (and failed) to sell him to neighbors, and accepted that I was stuck with him, I took a good look and was confused by the belly button thing I saw, which was all scabby and weird looking to me (we were still waiting for that last bit of the umbilical cord to dry up and fall off).  Being a five year old at the time, I wanted to know more about it, and I asked.  And my father answered.  He explained the basic facts of the belly button, but he added his own special detail.  That special detail haunts me to this day.  My dad claimed (I am *sure* jokingly and I am *assuming* without knowing the effect it would have) that if your belly button became untied, which it might (he said) if you messed with it too much, you would be like a balloon that came untied, and you would *literally* fly around the room until you completed deflated.

I was a five year old with a very vivid imagination and a lot of experience blowing up balloons and then letting them fly around until they deflated. Was he trying to make sure I didn't poke at my baby brother's still-healing belly button?  Was he trying to be funny?  Was he sleep-deprived and unaware of the consequences of such vivid imagery in the mind of his five-year-old?  I wish I knew.

But then (and now) this sounded so completely horrifying that I could not (and cannot to this day) cannot cope with my belly button. 

And apparently, neither can Lucy.  Thus, onward through the generations, we reproduce ourselves and our phobias, whether we want to or not. 

Soon we should know the results of Lucy's blood test.  If it tells us that she has no peanut anti-bodies in her blood, then we get to have a PEANUT CHALLENGE at the allergist's office (note: not at all like the Pepsi Challenge).  She did this before, for walnuts, and was cleared (which was nice!).  Lucy is excited about the prospect of possibly being able to eat ALL the Halloween candy, although in general, she shows no interest in eating peanuts (or in eating much that is beyond her known dietary preferences). 

Otherwise, we're still carrying the epi-pen, which means we constantly have a needle (with an auto-injector) with us, no matter where we go.  Which means Lucy and I have our greatest fear with us All. The. Time.