My first Flu Shot

Today, I had my first flu shot in my life.

Well, flu shot has been something I intended to avoid yearly because I believe I have always been a healthy person and my immune system is strong enough to fight off any diseases. This afternoon, my boss went around and tried to grab everyone to get the shot with him and when he got to my office, he had already successfully recruited a group of people. Well, when I saw the crowd, I thought: Seems kinda fun … so I might as well just tag along and the flu shot is free anyways and can really do no single harm to me ...

So I went. While I was standing in line, I started getting quite nervous ... for whatever reason. All I had in mind was the way the rats were euthanized under my numerous syringe pokes in the past years. Note: Don't ever think I am a person with a cold heart ... I had the same problem as most of you out there with killing living animals, but when it was part of your job responsibilities and after you had done it 100 times, it could become a fairly routine task. Normally, I really didn’t care too much in the size of needle used. Basically, my rule was – which ever came in handy. The ones that got poked with the larger gauge needle were just unlucky but I always thought it’s just a quick poke, how painful could that be. Well, I guess it’s until the moment that I had taken the place of the poor rat, I started to feel what they’re going through.

While I was thinking if I should back out and went back to my office, the nurse called me … but I was too concentrate in thinking of an excuse to chicken out, so I didn’t notice that until a male nurse came all the way from his station to where I was standing in line to invite me to get the shot. I followed him and sat down. After I sat down, I tried to calm myself down as much as I could but these rat-needle-poking scenes just wouldn’t leave from my head.

The nurse asked, “Are you nervous?”
I replied, “Yes, quite.”
He laughed and he tried to talk to me … I know he just wanted to distract my attention.

Then, he rolled up my sleeves and wiped my skin with some cold ethanol swab. I couldn’t bear to look at how it’s done.

Maybe 20 seconds later, he asked, “Does it hurt?”
I said, “NO …”
He laughed and said, “Isn’t it easy? It’s almost done!”

It’s then I looked over my shoulder and realized that he’s already in the process of doing the injection so part of the needle was inside my skin.

I thought, “Amazing … Very skillfully done ...” All of a sudden, I didn't feel as bad of poking those rats in the lab.

Okay, so here’s my first flu shot experience. I assume I’m all protected from the flu viruses this year. To test if this works, I decide I should stay close to sick people and see if this shot is working in my body. If not, I may as well save myself a poke next year …