A Shot in the Dark

So yesterday I went to my OB for The Shot, the shot that would Stop All Nonsense, and I thought I was pretty smart.

I wore a short-sleeved shirt.

Usually on days when I have an injection, I encounter a Major Wardrobe Malfunction and wear something not only long-sleeved, but tightly long-sleeved, such that I have to twist my arm around my head three or four times, pulling fabric this way and that, off the offending limb, finally coming up with one good arm to poke, albeit with my bra showing out the side for good measure.

HAH!

Not this time, baby, oh no. Short-sleeves. All the better to poke you with, m’dear.

Lovely Nurse Penny sat me on the paper-covered stirrup chair whilst she got the meds ready. It was a big needle. Big scary needle from a lovely blue plastic box, which I thought was deceptive…I mean, if you’re gonna give me a big fakkin’ shot, make the needle come out of a box that says Big Fakkin’ Shot Needles HERE. Just so I get the freak out.

Nurse Penny walked over to me and I pulled back a bit of the shirt sleeve, over my shoulder, for her to get a better look at where to stab my meaty arm.

Nurse Penny smiled.
I didn’t trust that smile.

Nurse Penny smiled, and her eyes sparkled, and Nurse Penny said, “Right cheek.”

At first I thought it was some bible verse or other, y’know, “Turn the other cheek”, like I should face the other way for Big Fakkin’ Shot Needle.

Oh no.

Nurse Penny was telling me to drop trou.

“Really? No, REALLY?!?!?”, I stammered. And then I laughed like a sort of nervous hyena for a second, and thought she was kidding, only Nurse Penny was now laughing with her mouth open, obviously enjoying the feeling of power, and I suddenly couldn’t remember how to unbutton my pants.

“Are you SURE?”, I asked her.

“Yep…right cheek,” Nurse Penny repeated.

It felt like high school, all those fumblings in back seats and front seats and nervous tittering and this-is-wrong-innit. I haven’t gotten a shot in my butt since I was a kid. What, was my arm so hideous, so deathly, that the only safe place was my ass? Fer cryin’…okay. I found the button and the zipper, and pulled pants and underwear over my pasty white mound of bum-flesh. There! I wanted to shout at her. THERE! You wanted it, you got it, lady. Big. White. Pasty. Bum. Flesh. I sat down nervously.

“You can stand up, it’ll be easier that way,” Nurse Penny suggested. I turned my back to her as she grabbed a handful of skin, in that ‘pinch an inch’ way that Special K Cereal told us to years ago. Only butt-wise.

“Little poke, I’m sorry,” she said, and then...I felt nothing. I was expecting, like, bee-sting-y feeling, like when the lab tech takes my blood for thyroid tests, or when the dentist decides to play Steve Martin in “Little Shop of Horrors”, or when well-meaning doctors take cell samples by cutting out parts of my cooter. But…this time…nothing. And then, the smallest of smallest feelings of burning, like stinging, as the liquid coursed into my biggest body part. “The injection takes a while to finish, sorry, this will take a few minutes.”

The burning intensified only slightly, and Nurse Penny and I stood there, with Big Fakkin’ Shot Needle sticking out of my big ol’ behind, and then it occurred to me…IF the kindly Nurse HAD given me the shot in my arm, it would have hurt…a lot…and I would have had to look at the offending pointy object, which would have appeared as a machete sticking out of my poor old appendage, and I probably would have passed out. At least this way, I couldn’t see it, I hardly felt it, and Nurse Penny and I could have a pleasant chat about the weather and the OB and FMLA forms.

She finished with a gentle pull-out of the needle and a crinkly snap of a band-aid. Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all.

After several chats with several other office staffers, I headed to my car to return to work, feeling pretty durn good. A little freaked out about what the shot was supposed to do (hot flashes? Aren’t I hot enough?). I slid into my car, and…DAMN! Shot! Butt! Sting! Yeow!

But.

Not an altogether bad feeling.

A little slap-and-tickle feeling.

Niiiiiice.

Dish this...have you had a shot in your butt lately?