Shoot me now. No, really.

Because today is flu shot day.
Not for me, but for Thing 2.

Umm….I’ll take the flu, please?

Seriously.
You might tell me your kid hates to get shots, but until you’ve walked in the shoes that I’ve been walking in for the past 8 years or so, I do not want to hear it.

Let me give you a little background.

It all began when she was around 6 months old.
Because of Thing 2’s prematurity, her lungs were extremely susceptible to damage if she contracted any sort of respiratory virus, and because she had a big sister in the petri-dish that is kindergarten, she was especially vulnerable.  A home health care nurse came once or twice a month for about 4 months and gave her a flu shot in her chubby little leg.  And she s-c-r-e-a-m-e-d (nothing wrong with her lungs at all).  Listen, I know most babies scream when they get shots, but this kid took it to a whole new level.  Like Kilimanjaro new level.
Maybe it was the fact that as a teeny baby she’d had so many IV needles poked into her little head and hands and feet and ankles in the NICU (which, 11 and a half years later still pains me to the core), but this kid went berserk every time she got shot.
And so began her needle phobia (okay, seriously, I just went to Wiki to find out the long and hard to pronounce scientific name for this, and it honestly says ‘Fear of needles,also known as needle phobia…‘. Really??)

Ages 2 – 9 (yes….nine):
Every time I knew she was going to need a shot, I started drinking early.
Nah, I’m lying.
I’d wait until we were sitting in the waiting room of the doctor’s office.
We discovered that if we lied to her about not having to get a shot, it would totally backfire on us and she’d go even more crazy.
Let me define crazy:
cra•zy noun
1. mentally deranged; demented; insane (those are actually the words from the dictionary.com definition…and they fit well. But oh, wait, there’s more…)
2.  ear-splitting screaming punctuated with high-pitched squeals that make you hope you never have to see dolphins being slaugtered…because you have now heard what it sounds like.
3.  thrashing and arching and kicking and slapping at you as you try to remove her little 3T sized leggings.
4.  bulging eyes 

This is ME, not her, BTW

So how do you handle that type of crazy?

You sit on her, of course.
Nah, actually we only did that in the privacy of our own home (from ages 3 to about 8) when we had to attempt to force medicine down her throat as she was thrashing her head back and forth, which is another post for another day (and if you are employed by CPS, please skip that one).
But I did have to make sure Husband could be at the doctor’s appointments and it did take both of us plus an extra nurse (sometimes 2) to hold her down.
By the time she was like 5, though, we had it down to a science.

Husband firmly lifts Thing 2 up into air, I swiftly pull the leggings or sweats (only pants with elastic waistbands of course) off in one fell swoop. Hard to do over the kicking feet, but I could bob and weave like Mike Tyson, I tell ya.
Lay her struggling and screaming body down on the papered table.
I throw my body over the top half of hers, firmly holding her arms in place with all the strength I possess and with my head a mere inch or two from hers, trying to speak soothingly to calm her down, but in actuality screaming just to be heard. IT’S OKAY, BABY! IT’S OKAY! CALM DOWN! (ridiculous words when you are shouting them, btw.)
Husband holds both ankles down firmly to the table, so she can’t punt the nurse in the face.
And if we thought the screaming couldn’t get any louder, the sound she’d make when the needle actually went in could be heard in surrounding states.
I’d seriously walk out of there with my ears absolutely ringing.  For hours.
Proof that I’m not making this up?
When she was 8 she gave herself laryngitis for the rest of the day and had a swollen throat and complained all day about ‘the taste of blood in my mouth’.
Yeah. She screamed herself hoarse and bloody.

I’m happy to report that the past 2 years have gotten better.
A little.
She got old enough that I told her while it was certainly okay to be scared and hell, even to scream as loud as she wanted to, I wasn’t gonna put up with that holding and restraining crap anymore.  Time to pull on the big girl panties and let them shoot you.
Now she just bargains.
As soon as the nurse walks in, it begins.
Wait, she says with panic stricken wild eyes.  Just wait a second.
Just a second.
Just one more second!!
Panic escalating and the crazy starting to show itself.
Me, in a loving (honestly) yet firm and I MEAN BUSINESS kind of voice: Pull it together, sister. Deep breath. No more seconds. The time is NOW. You can do it!!!
Her: NoNONo – Just a second!! JUST ANOTHER SECONNNNNND!!! 
And Bam! I grab her arms in a flash and that needle goes in and she screams bloody murder and it’s done.  It’s as if the nurse and I had rehearsed it, we pull it off so quickly and seamlessly (but no…no…of course we haven’t…I mean, that would be silly…).
And then, bless her heart, when it’s all over, that sweet girl apologizes.
And I hug her tight and tell her no worries and that she’s a champ and it’s over for another year.
(Or until May when she’ll need 2 more shots. Shhhhhh.)

It’s a very real fear, her ‘needle phobia’, and it absolutely breaks my heart (along with my eardrums) every time we go through it. She’s a totally different kid in that doctor’s office.  Goes in a sweet little tiger, and then once they pull out the shot she goes all Montecore on us.