a little bit of shiny helps the needle go in

[anotheranon]

Study: Decorated needles calm patients. This might explain why even though I still get apprehensive about injections, I can get downright giddy when I'm in a piercing studio: if there's jewelry chasing the needle, I do just fine :P

Dr. Charles from Scienceblogs.com has his own ideas for decorations, but IMHO none of them hold a candle to a steel captive bead ring (especially not Rumsfeld)...

Comments

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

It's rather chilling to think that most of our species is that dumb ... to me, sharp is sharp no matter how it's decorated. :P

Makes sense though, that your reaction is different in a piercing studio ... the jewellery is the tangible, shiny-things reward. Which leads me to speculate on whether being able to SEE what the injection was accomplishing (y'know, watch the vaccine trigger the building of armies of antibodies) would change your reaction to medical pointy things. Part-trigger to this speculation is also knowing why there's no way I'll ever voluntarily have any other piercing beyond the already-done ears ... it's not a personal, cultural or aesthetic objection, but the fact that my body has a VERY strong drive to heal which resulted in a close-to-3-month painful infection battle in my poor li'l earlobes; I won that one, but definitely don't want to go through it again with any other body part.

Thus my aversion is associated with a bad experience. Interestingly, I have no problem with medical injections as long as I look away so that I don't anticipate the moment of the jab ... possibly because I've never had to experience a re-try, a hunt for a vein, or any of the other things that can turn this simple action into a real ordeal. Or mebbe it's just because I was prepping and giving injections to pigs when I was in my teens ... :p

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Makes sense though, that your reaction is different in a piercing studio ... the jewellery is the tangible, shiny-things reward.

This, and I've been in piercing studios that were cleaner than some doctor's offices :P

In all seriousness, I had a horror of needles all the way through high school, and to this day I cannot have an injection if I can see the needle go in. Perhaps piercing is different for me because it's not intramuscular (and hence is a different "flavor" of pain) and because it feels more voluntary (though admittedly the yearly flu shot and 9 years of Depo were technically injections I didn't necessarily need - there were alternatives).

But I do hear you re: painful healing up: my cartilage fussed for 2 years before finally settling in, and is the one piercing I have that had I known how difficult it would be, I would not have done.

[jlsjlsjls.livejournal.com]

Backtracking: I must thank you for this exchange because it made me realize that I hadn't worn earrings for nearly three weeks, so immediately put a pair in ... and, yes, those dear little, hard-won holes had already started to shrink. Everything is now all stretched back out where it should be now (thanks to wearing the thickest posts I own for a continuous 72 hours). The things we do ... :p