In all honesty, needles are still one of my least favorite parts about having hemophilia. I’ve dealt with getting infusions my entire life, and I still dread, just a little bit, having to infuse myself when I have a bleed. I think perhaps one of the biggest battles a young hemophiliac has to face is coping with the fact that their medicine comes from a needle. When I was a kid, I fought my parents as much as I could about getting my infusions. I would hide bleeds, hide pain, and sometimes just hide myself, all in an effort to avoid getting a shot. As an adult, that sounds silly, that’s because I now understand exactly what I’m doing with the needles, and what they’re doing for me, so that makes it a little easier. I hope with this poem I can make a fear of needles seem a little bit sillier to a young hemophiliac. No one likes needles. The fact is they’re painful, but after years of using them, a patient will get used to them.
Every year it will get easier. In the meantime, though, it can be difficult for parents to teach their kids exactly how important their needles are to their health. It was something I refused to understand when I was a young patient. Rather than sitting down, rationalizing the situation, and concluding that these needles were the only way I was going to get the medicine that I need to live, I would simply want to avoid the pain, and not think about anything else. I truly believe that trying to engage children and teaching them exactly what the purpose is of things like needles, is the best way to get them to accept that it’s a part of their life, and embrace it as something they need. Of course, they’re going to rebel against it for a while, but hopefully with things like this poem, they’ll learn soon enough that needles are a tool just like their factor. If they’re anything like me, they’ll go from trying to hide from needles, to embracing the fact that they’re probably the only one in their friend group who can give themselves an infusion!
