There are two different fears at an STI blood draw.
One is the fear of the result.
The other is the draw itself.
Result fear carries a heavy history. It’s the fear that changed a generation. Decades ago when a man my age walked into a clinic and extended his arm, he understood that the piece of paper coming back to him in two weeks might lead to an obituary.
That fear is not my fear, and I want to be precise about why: it’s not because I’m braver. Definitely not that. It’s because people who were braver than me spent forty years creating a different outcome.
PrEP exists, and I use it. It prevents an HIV infection. And fewer people are carrying the virus because of treatment advancements. And more people have access to becoming undetectable, which equals untransmittable. A person living with HIV who’s on treatment and virally suppressed cannot transmit the virus sexually. Everything else on the standard STI panel is curable, or treatable, or both, and is usually cost-accessible.
So the result isn’t an obituary anymore. The result is information. And I have made my peace with information.
Which leaves the needle. I hate it.
It feels small. It feels, frankly, a little weak. Men were afraid of a result and they were right to be. I am afraid of a measly prick. Nobody wrote a quilt panel about somebody’s dislike of a butterfly catheter.
But I want to make an argument for taking it seriously anyway, and it’s this:
A fear that keeps you out of the chair keeps you out of the chair, regardless of how undignified the fear is. Which means my small, silly, embarrassing fear is no longer a personal quirk. It’s a barrier. The good news? Barriers have fixes. Here’s what I learned.
I now tell the phlebotomist what I need before anyone touches me. It takes about twenty seconds.
My requests have never once been refused.
I’ll also add: none of this makes the needle hurt less. That’s not what it’s for.
What it does is change the experience for me. Without it, a blood draw is something that is being done to me, on someone else’s timing, in a room where I have no say. With it, it’s something I’m doing. With terms I set, at a moment I’ve agreed to, in conditions I’ve asked for. I’m feeling more powerful through it all.
Your list will be different from mine. Some people need to look away and would rather chew through the arm of the chair than watch. Some people want the countdown. Some people want to be talked at continuously about their phlebotomist’s daughter’s recital. Some people need to lie flat, or eat first, or tense their legs to keep their blood pressure up. The specific protocol isn’t the point.
Having one is the point.
I put off asking for years, because it felt like making a fuss over nothing, and because a grown man requesting silence for a routine blood draw sounds like a man who thinks a lot of himself. Here is what I found when I finally did it: the phlebotomist said sure. That’s all. Every time, in every city, in every country I’ve had this done. It costs them nothing. It has never been weird. The only person who ever thought it was too much to ask may have been me.
So I go. I roll up the sleeve. I ask for quiet. I watch.
And I don’t need a countdown.